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THE
COSMOLOGY OF THE EIGYEDA.
THE
COSMOLOGY OF THE RIGVEDA,
AN ESSAY
H. W. WALLIS, M.A,,
GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
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>J Of THF
UNIVERS1T
OF
WILLIAMlK^ifB KORGATE,
14, HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON;
and 20, SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
1887.
GENERAL
HERTFORD :
PRINTED BY STEPHEN AUSTIN AND SONS
B L l I I S*
/Hi
PREFACE.
The object of this essay is not so much to
present a complete picture of the Cosmology
of the Eigveda, as to supply the material from
which such a picture may be drawn. The
writer has endeavoured to leave no strictly
cosmological passage without a reference, and
to add references to illustrative passages where
they appeared to indicate the direction in
which an explanation may be sought. In
order to avoid any encumbrance of the notes
by superfluous matter, references which are
easily accessible in other books, such as
Grassmann's Lexicon, are omitted, and those
references which are intended to substantiate
statements which are not likely to be the
subject of doubt, are reduced to the smallest
number possible. The isolation of the Eigveda
156447
vi Preface.
is justified on linguistic grounds. On the
other hand, the argument which is drawn from
the Atharvaveda in the Introduction is based
on the fact, attested by the internal character
of that collection and by tradition, that the
Atharvaveda lies apart from the stream of
Brahmanic development : on the testimony of
residents in India to the superstitious character
of modern Hindoos : and on the striking
similarity of the charms of the Atharvaveda
to those of European nations. If, as seems
most probable, the cosmological passages and
hymns of the Eigveda are to be classified with
the latest compositions in the collection, the
conceptions with which the essay deals must
be regarded as belonging to the latest period
represented in the Eigveda, when the earlier
hymns were still on the lips of priests whose
language did not differ materially in construc-
tion from that contained in the hymns which
they recited.
The writer desires here to express his sincere
gratitude to those teachers who have assisted
him in his general Sanskrit studies, Professors
Preface. vii
E. B. Cowell, R. v. Both, G. Biihler, F.
Kielhorn, and K. Geldner, some of whom have
also kindly suggested corrections in this essay
while it was passing through the press.
Above all, his thanks are due to that Trust
which, in the first place, rendered it possible
for him to devote himself to the study, and
now has undertaken the publication of this
book.
May, 1887.
TABLE OF CONTENTS,
INTRODUCTION.
l'AGE
The subject of the essay 1
Limits of the study . . 2
The absence of chronological data 3
The character of the collection determined by internal
indications 4
By contrast with the Atharvaveda 7
The impersonality of the Vedic gods 8
Deification of abstractions 9
The transference of divine functions and attributes . . 11
The general tendency of the Eigveda 13
CHAPTER I.
THE BUILDING OF THE WORLD.
The significance of metaphors in the Eigveda . . . . 16
The measuring and building of heaven and earth ... 17
The firmness of the structure ......... 20
The introduction of the fire 21
Tvashtar, the divine carpenter 23
The Eibhus, the workmen 24
The general character of the description 26-
Contents.
CHAPTER II.
GENERATION.
PAGE
The application of analogy 28
Fire and water 29
The metaphor of parentage, temporal, generic, and local. 29
Heaven and earth, the universal parents 31
The sun as the type of generation 32
Elements of confusion in the hymns to Agni .... 32
Agni in the waters of heaven 33
Gandharva, X. 123 34
The union of Gandharva with Apsaras 37
The marriage of Surya 39
The births of the gods aud of the worlds, X. 72. . . 41
Aditi and Daksha 44
The birth of Agni, X. 31. 7-10 46
The rise of the sun, X. 5 48
Hiranyagarbha, X. 121 50
The sun as supreme divinity 52
The Unborn 53
Agni as a cosmogonic factor 54
The waters 56
Parjanya, VII. 101 58
The one thing, X. 129 57
The non-existent and the existent 61
Allegory and analogy 62
Contents. xi
CHAPTER IIT.
THE SACRIFICE.
TAGE
The source of this explanation 64
The meaning of the sacrifice 64
The popular conception of death 65
The sacrificial theory 66
The fathers identified with the rays of Agni . . . . 68
The Angirases • 69
The creative functions of the fathers 71
Generation through the fathers, X.1 56 71
Anticipation of divine blessedness 75
The fathers in the sun, III. 38 76
The sacrificial prayer 78
The heavenly sacrifice 79
Vic^vakarman, sacrificer and creator, X. 81, 82. . . . 80
Relation of Vic,vakarinan to Hiranyagarbha .... 84
Vac compared with Sarasvati and Vayu ...... 85
Purusha, X. 90 86
Summary of results 89
CHAPTER IY.
THE ORDER OF THE WORLD.
The interpretation of abstract words 91
The general meaning of the word ritd 91
Special applications of the word 93
The principle precedes the phenomena, X. 190 ... 95
The sons and parents of the ritd 96
Yaruna, the king 97
xii Content?.
PAGE
The vratdni of Yaiuna 99
The relation of Varuna to ritd 100
Yaruna as creator, V. 85. 101
The maya of Asura 102
Monotheism 104
Varuna' s decline 105
The popularity of Indra 105
Speculation fostered by the Kshatriyas 106
APPENDIX.
THE COSMOGRAPHY OF THE RIGVEDA.
The form of the earth Ill
Heaven and earth a pair 112
The intermediate space 113
Twofold, threefold, sixfold, ninefold divisions of the
world 114
Professor Zimmer's view of a rajas under the earth. . 115
The course of the sun 117
Index of Passages . 119
Index of Sanskrit Words 128
General Index 129
CORRIGENDA.
Page 25, line 23. For three read four.
Page 40/ line 23. For XI. 81. 4. read IX. 81. 4.
Page 57, note 5. For sun read son.
Page 67, note 4. For X. 196. 4. read X. 169. 4.
Page 92, note 1. For world read word.
>' or THE
UNIVERSITY
THE
COSMOLOGY OP THE RIGVEDA.
INTRODUCTION.
Religion is the behaviour of man with respect to the
natural forces and influences of the world which he
regards as manifestations of superhuman will. The
external form of religion is characterized by rites and
ceremonies which are for the most part traditions
from a forgotten past ; the inner life is twofold, on
the one hand emotional, enthusiastic, and passionate,
on the other reflective, speculative, and philosophical.
The character of each of these phases is determined by
the culture and civilization of the people professing the
religion. The historian may approach his subject
from three sides, according as he wishes to illustrate
the aesthetic, moral, or mental character of the people.
In the following pages the religious hymns of the
Rigveda will be treated solely as expressions of in-
tellectual thought. The stray guesses and vague
attempts at philosophy, which are scattered here
and there through the hymns of that collection,
1
The Cosmology of the Rigveda.
will be classified and, as far as possible, arranged
in logical sequence with a view to discovering the
manner of reasoning in vogue among the composers
of the hymns, the nature of the inferences and proofs
which they admitted. A critical investigation of the
earliest recorded results of Indian thought may be
expected to throw considerable light on the difficult
problem of the growth of Indian philosophy, if a
subject can be found which is common to the later and
the earlier thinkers. Fortunately, one great problem
presents itself immediately as pressing for solution in
all ages, namely, the origin and formation of the
existing world. The passages relating to this subject
will here be brought together and arranged according
to the similarity of the ideas contained in them ;
the most obvious links connecting analogous con-
ceptions will be suggested ; and other passages will
be adduced only so far as they serve to explain
allusions in the cosmological passages.
It is an essential condition of such a study that the
limits of the subject should be drawn as closely as
possible ; that, as far as possible, every avenue should
be closed upon conjecture and hypothesis ; and that,
whenever this is practicable, the authors of the hymns
should be allowed to speak their own words. Conse-
quently, no attempt will be made to discover the origin
of the conceptions found in our book. Mythology
and etymology, the investigation of the stereotyped
and formal results of preceding ages of thought, find
Limits of the study.
no place in such a plan. Parallels from the religious
and philosophic thought of other nations, and illustra-
tions from later books, which would have obscured
the interdependence of the Vedic ideas on one another,
and so rendered it more difficult for the reader to
place himself in the position of the authors, are also
excluded.
The almost entire neglect of the chronological
sequence of the hymns in this essay, which is a more
serious omission, is the unavoidable consequence of the
failure that has as yet attended every attempt to find
a criterion by which to determine their relative dates.
It is generally supposed that the occurrence of a
hymn in the tenth book affords a suspicion of the
lateness of its composition. Forms and meanings of
words and grammatical constructions, which are of
rare occurrence in the Rigveda, and become more
frequent later, would also seem to indicate a late
date for the hymns in which they occur ; but it
has not yet been found possible to establish any
rules of general applicability on this score. Even if
we were able to determine the dates of the hj^mns,
we should still be very far from deciding the relative
ages of the ideas contained in them. The cosmo-
logical guesses strung together in the other Yedic
collections, and even in the Brahmanas, occasionally
bear a more primitive character than those in the
Rigveda, though the task of separating them from
later accretions is encumbered with greater difficulty.
Introduction.
The illustrations from geology which are frequently-
introduced in this connection fail to apply in one
important particular. The opinions held by a single
man or a body of men are not lifeless as a fossil
nor arranged in strata according to age ; they are
continually growing or dying, and shifting their
relative positions through interaction one on another;
they derive their vitality and force of meaning from
association with the whole complex of thought in
which they live. A chronological arrangement of
the ideas could have no other basis than such
general principles as may be abstracted from a
comprehensive study of the mythology and ideology
of all nations.
One question, which has given rise to much dis-
pute, requires preliminary consideration : how far our
hymns may be regarded as representative of the
common thought of the people. The question admits
of treatment in two ways. We may consider the
statements of the Eishis, the composers of the
hymns, about themselves and their work;1 and we
may compare their productions with the only other
Veda of a sufficiently distinctive character, the
Atharvaveda. If we examine the hymns of the Rig-
veda alone, we find there two clear indications of the
bias of the authors in their exclusiveness and their
1 A rich collection of passages on this subject will be found in Dr.
Muir's Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. iii., and in his article on the
• position of the priests in the Vedic age in the J.R.A.S. for 1866, p. 257.
The bias of the JRtshis.
glorification of the sacrifice. They represent them-
selves as the only mediators between man and the
gods. They pride themselves on the pure orthodoxy
of their religion and on the correctness of their
rites. Theirs are the true or real gods, served by
the true priests of a true faith, with true prayers
and offerings.1 Other worshippers and their gods
are cursed as demons and worshippers of demons.2
They are the ungodly, men who know not Indra,
who deny Indra's existence, who serve no Agni,
enemies of the gods, haters of the sacrifice, men of
evil ways, who offer no sacrifice.3 Upon such people
the Eishis call down the terrible wrath of all their
gods, and solemnly aver that they have never them-
selves been guilty of any improper worship of other
gods or demons. Owing to the vagueness of the
references, it is impossible to determine against whom
the denunciations are levelled, whether at dissenters
belonging to the same nation or tribe as the orthodox
or at foreigners ; they present us, however, with the
picture of a violent religious contest, and serve to
remind us that the Rishis were not the only bidders
for authority among the people, even in matters of
theolog3''. If the Rishis had any differences among
1 II. 26. 1. Bergaigne, La Religion vedique, vol. iii. p. 184.
2 V. 42. 10., V, 12., VII. 104. 14-16., V. 42. 10., VIII. 18. 13., II.
23. 16.
3 ddeva ; auindrd cf. II. 12. 5. ; dnagnitra cf. I. 147. 2. ; devanidah ;
brahmadv/shah ; anydvrata, avratd, dpavrata ; ayajnd.
6 Introduction.
themselves, their common interest at any rate centred
in the sacrifice. The most extravagant and offensive
verses in the collection are the unrestrained praises
of the liberality of kings and other rich patrons of
the sacrifice, shown especially in donations of cattle
to the priests. It was the endeavour of the Rishis
to make themselves as indispensable as possible to the
great ones of the earth, and for that end to magnify
the sacrifice and its accompaniment, the hymn, as
the only means of attaining prosperity and divine
favour.1 There are no curses so bitter as those in which
they denounce the illiberal. This glorification of the
sacrifice is the main burden of the whole Rigveda,
showing itself in the assimilation of all things in
heaven and earth to the sacrifice, and in the elevation
of the instruments and personifications of the sacrifice
to the rank of great deities. It was not in the
interest of the Rishis to help forward the pro-
gress of speculative thought in its advance towards
philosophy ; but rather to hedge about their own
religious conceptions with a wall of sanctity, and to
bring within this compass the wandering fancies of
the people, and the enquiring guesses of the thinkers.
Extraneous thought and criticism was to them a
source of danger ; they sought, therefore, to obscure
the doctrines of their theology by a multiplication
of complicated allusions and dark riddles, with which
1 Compare H. Zimmer, Altindisches Leben, pp. 168-171, 194-5.
The Rigveda contrasted icith the Atharvaveda. 7
they might occupy the minds of their hearers, at the
same time gratifying the native taste for puzzle and
paradox.1 The material upon which they worked
consisted in part of the myths and legends which
were rooted in the traditions of the people, and partly
also of the rude physics and metaphysics of the more
thoughtful. These they endeavour to adapt to their
own sacrificial theory.
The contents and form of the great majority of the
hymns in the Rigveda bear distinctly the marks of a
complex of doctrine in process of elaboration.2 It
would be quite conceivable that this doctrine, the work
of a class of priests, was submissively accepted as
alone efficacious by the mass of the people, were the
Rigveda the only Yeda extant. The Atharvaveda,
however, presents us with another picture. In it we
find a collection of charms and incantations for the
practical uses of common life, exhibiting a spiritism
and a demonolatry which the Rishis of the Rigveda
scorned. We find a state of morality contrasting
1 parohshapriya iva hi devah pratyakshadvishah, * For the gods love
what is recondite, and hate that which is evident.' — Brihaditr. Up. 4. 2. 2.
2 " Neither in the language nor in the thought of the Rig- Veda have
I been able to discover that quality of primitive natural simplicity which
so many are fain to see in it. The poetry it contains appears to me, on
the contrary, to be of a singularly refined character and artificially
elaborated, full of allusions and reticences, of pretensions to mysticism
and theosophic insight ; and the manner of its expression is such as
reminds one more frequently of the phraseology in use among certain
small groups of initiated than the poetic language of a large community."
— Barth, The Religions of India, p. xiii.
8 Introduction.
strongly with the noble moral teaching of the Rigveda,
and a more popular treatment of the Vedic gods. We
find, further, a number of speculative pieces of rank
mysticism running out in wild luxuriance far beyond
the sober limits of the hymns of the Rigveda. We
are therefore justified in characterizing the hymns
of the Rigveda as in the main the products of a
special system independent of the general thought
of the nation, and in carefully considering at every
point how far the adjustment of thought to it may
have influenced the form of expression. In this essay
the word Rishi will, for convenience, be used par-
ticularly to denote the adherents and promoters of
this system.
On the other hand, if it be granted that the hymns
represent in the main a system of theology which was
the work of a particular class of men, rather than the
natural growth of a national consciousness, we may
still find the greatest difficulty in individual cases
in determining how far the system has influenced their
manner of thought. The following description of the
peculiar treatment of the gods in our collection may
serve as an illustration of this difficulty. The deities
of the Rigveda differ essentially from the gods of Greek
or Scandinavian mythology and of the Mahabhiirata
in the abstract and almost impersonal nature of their
characters. They are little more than factors in the
physical and moral order of the world, apart from
which none, except perhaps Indra, has a self-interested
The nature of the Vedic gods. 9
existence. To the Rishis they are pre-eminently the
receivers of sacrifice ; the apotheosis of the Itibhus is
described as the attainment of the right to receive
sacrifice. They have no definite forms. The mention
of their clothes, or of different parts of their bodies,
serves only to express the nature of their actions or
characters. The strength of Indra is illustrated by
the shaking of his blonde mustachios ; his insatiable
thirst for soma causes the poet to glorify the enormous
capacity of his belly. Savitar raises his arms, the
beams of the sun, to give life to the world. Rudra
and the Maruts are clad in bright armour and carry
spears, and crack their shining whips of light over
their horses to represent the lightning. The Dawn
lets fall her clothes to display her beauty. Mitra and
Varuna are throned in heaven ; the other gods, so far
as they are not identified with individual objects,
wander through the world at will. We hear nothing
of temples of the gods, and it is almost certain that
the hymns recognize no idols ; the gods were them-
selves present in the different phenomena of the world.
The peculiarly impersonal nature of the gods is
seen in the deification of purely abstract notions and
agencies. The most striking examples of such gods
are those whose names are formed with the suffix r
tar ; the divine agents of the processes designated by
the verbal roots from which their names are derived.
The most prominent of these are Savitar, ' the
quickener,' and Tvashtar, 'the carpenter/ That both
10 Introduction.
gods were considered as such agents appears from the
frequent play on the connection between their names
and the related verbal forms ; and from the constant
addition to their names of the substantive devd, in
passages where we may with equal plausibility translate
1 the carpenter god/ ' the quickening god/ or ' god
Savitar/ ' god Tvashtar.' Tvashtar is the god who
produces the various objects in nature which show
the skill of an artificer ; Savitar is, however, with
few exceptions,1 always identified with the great
quickener of the world, the sun ; and thus the abstract
character of his conception is somewhat obscured. The
frequent ascription of the action of ordaining (dhd)
the things in the world to different gods led to tho
conception of a separate god, the Ordainer or Estab-
lishes Dhatar. Vidhatar is in like manner the Dis-
poser. "We find a devd Netar three times invoked in
one hymn,2 apparently as the Guide of the course
of life ; and a devd Tratar, to whom prayers are ad-
dressed for protection against foes.3 Other examples
of deities invoked by the Eishis, whose names bear a
similarly abstract character, are Brahmanaspati or Bri-
haspati, • the lord of the sacrificial prayer/ Prajapati
* the lord of things born/ Anumati ' graciousness/
Aramati ' prayer/ Ila ' adoration/ Qraddha ' faith/ and
Yac ■ voice/
1 e.g. IV. 54., III. 33. 6.
2 V. 50.
3 IV. 55. 5, 7., I. 106. 7., VIII. 18. 20.
Transference of divine attributes. II
The abstract nature of the Yedic gods in general
shows itself in the indefiniteness of the sphere of
activity of each one, in the poverty of their individual
attributes, and in the readiness with which these
attributes are transferred from one god to another.
This is the explanation of the principle familiar from
Professor Max Miiller's writings under the name
of ' henotheism, ' by which the god invoked on a
particular occasion is represented as exercising the
functions of other gods, and assuming their attributes.
The more impersonal and abstract the conception of
the god, the easier it is to attribute his entire activity
to another. This is particularly striking in the case
of one ancient god, Bhaga, who has become in the
Rigveda little more than a source from which descrip-
tions of the functions of other gods are obtained, or a
standard of comparison by which their greatness is
enhanced. His name has survived in the Slavonic
languages as a general name for god, a sense which
it also has in the Avesta. To judge from the Rigveda^
Bhaga would seem to be a survival from an ancient
sun-worship, of which we shall find traces in the
course of the essay. His name is frequently mentioned
with that of Savitar, apparently as an epithet to
express Savitar's bountiful gift of sunshine to men.
He is invoked along with Pushan and the Adityas,
Mitra, Varuna, and Aryaman. The dawn is his
sister.1 The eye of heaven is adorned with Bhaga's-
1 I. 123. 5. : cf. VII. 41. 2.
12 Introduction*
light. The hymns mount up to Vishnu as on Bhaga's
road. * Most frequently, however, comparison with
Bhaga is intended to express a vague glorification
of the bounty of Indra and Agni ; the only special
points of comparison are that Indra carries the two
worlds, heaven and earth, as Bhaga; and that Agni
is the leader of the tribes of heaven, as Bhaga.2
This apparent confusion of the functions of the
gods shows itself in three ways. In the first place,
there are common divine actions or attributes which
may with equal propriety be ascribed to two or more
gods invoked separately or together, to all the members
of different classes of gods, such as the sacrificial gods,
and the warrior-gods, or to all the gods as gods. In
such cases there is no real confusion. Secondly,
there are attributes and actions expressed in similar
phrases, which, however, belong to different gods
through the development of their characters from
different original conceptions in such a way as to
cover common ground. Of this nature are the
approximation of Tvashtar and Savitar, and the
application of the name 'father' to different gods. This
tendency was assisted by the occasional existence
in the mind of a poet of a traditional verse or
expression applied originally to another god, but
expressing more or less exactly the thought the poet
1 I. 136. 2. ; III. 54. 14.; cf. X. 151. 1.
2 I. 62. 7. ; III. 20. 4.
Confusion of the divine functions. 1$
wished to utter. The confusion is in this case real, but
it is not the result of a direct transference of functions.
Lastly, there is the conscious application to one god
of the attributes of another, often of the most cha-
racteristic attributes of the other god, either with
the addition of the name of the other god, or with
some appellative or expression familiar to the Rishis
in association with him. The god invoked, who in
such cases is usually Agni, Soma, or Indra, unites
with his own functions those of another god or gods.
Agni, Soma, and Brihaspati are expressly identified
with other gods as including their entire activity,
even without the insertion of any adverb of comparison,
as also it is said of Savitar that he "becomes Mitra,
becomes Pushan."1 The transference here is occa-
sional and of a rhetorical character, and is thus entirely
distinct from the syncretism of the later divine
Triad.
This fusion is, however, but one phase of a move-
ment of thought to be traced through the whole
collection, a harmonizing movement by which it is
endeavoured to concentrate the theological ideas
recognized by the Rishis. It is the result of two
tendencies, both of which would seem to mark our
hymns as belonging rather to the end of an epoch
in the thought of the nation than to a period of
* II. 1., V. 3. 1, 2., 1. 163. 3. ; IX. passim ; X. 98. 1. ; mitrd bht
pushti bhavasi V. 81. 4, 5.
14 Introduction.
active production.1 The one tendency which is pecu-
liarly characteristic of India is the economical desire
to collect and preserve the entire theological stock of
the nation that nothing be lost, rather than to strike
out a new path in disregard of previous results.
Legends and mythical conceptions, as well as deities,
derived originally from different orders of thought,
are placed side by side, approximated to one another
and confused together. The other tendency is the
endeavour to define the unity of nature, which to
the layman was apparently typified in the light, but
which the Eishi endeavoured to associate with the
sacrifice. The various products of this latter tendency
are particularly characteristic of the difference be-
tween the cosmologies and cosmological formulae of
the Rigveda and those of the Atharvaveda. In the
Rigveda, as we have seen, the divine actions are
transferable from one god to another ; in the mystical
hymns of the Atharvaveda the several elements of
the world are identified with a few abstractions,
Skambha 'the support/ Prima 'the breath of life/
Kala ' time/ Ucchishta ' the remains of the sacrifice/
1 " For the great majority of the hymns of the Rigveda it hecomes, in
my opinion, more and more evident, that they mark not the rise, nor the
zenith, hut rather the decline of the oldest Indian lyrical art. This
appears from the unvaried uniformity and monotony of thought and
metaphor, the ahsence of originality in most of the hymns of the Rigveda ;
and these rather negative qualities are not indeed limited to particular
books, they extend, so far as I can see, in greater or less degree, over the
whole collection." — Bradke's Dyaus Asura, p. 2.
Tendency of the Rigveda. 15
and others, each of which is for the time tentatively
regarded as the substratum of the universe, its cause
and end. Neither of these phases can be accurately
described as pantheistic. In the earlier book the
gods are not categorically (with one or two excep-
tions, e.g. Aditi I. 89. 10.) identified with the universe;
in the later the abstractions and strange figures with
which the elements of nature are identified cannot
be described as gods. The logical development of
the one phase of thought ends in monotheism, of the
t)ther in atheism.
CHAPTER I.
THE BUILDING OF THE WORLD.
The philosophy of nature may be described as the
classification of natural forces and agencies. The
classifications of science are based upon identity or
uniformity of principle discovered by analysis and in-
ductive reasoning ; unscientific classifications or mental
associations are the results of superficial comparison.
The former we commonly call explanations, the latter
resemblances, analogies, or metaphors. In an age
destitute of science this distinction vanishes ; the
metaphor partakes of the nature of an explanation.
The importance of the metaphors employed in the Rig-
veda is seen in the constancy of their application as
compared with the ornamental or descriptive metaphors
of modern poetry ; fixed comparisons are consecrated
to particular uses and endued with a sanction which
can only be explained as the result of a very special
sense of their propriety. Thus in describing the
formation of the world we find the Yedic poets
recurring perpetually to the metaphor of building in
all its details, showing that they accepted this com-
parison as the form of expression most applicable to
The significance of the metaphor. 17
creation. If we remember that the Vedic house was
made of wood, it is not difficult to picture to ourselves
in outline the different stages in the process of its
erection : first, the felling of the trees for wood, and
the measuring of the site ; next, the fixing of the
main-posts in the four corners supported by leaning
buttresses, and of the two door-posts in the front ;
and lastly, the covering-in of the whole with cross-
beams, rafters, laths, and some kind of mud or thatch
to fill up the crevices. We shall see all these stages
recur in the allusions to the formation of the world.
That the world should have been created from
nothing is an idea which finds no place in the
Eigveda; the Rishis are, however, at a loss to
explain whence the divine builders obtained the im-
perishable material for their work. aWhat indeed
was the wood ? What too was that tree from which
they fashioned the heaven and the earth ? They two
stand fast and grow not old for ever, while many
days and mornings wax old." l The measuring of
1 X. 31. 7. ; cf. X. 81. 4. Whether the word vdna in the Rigveda is
ever to be translated ' forest ' is doubtful. The use of the word for cloud
would seem to be due to the following associations. The rain is pictured
as contained in wooden vats. The lightning burns in the clouds as fire in
wood. The clouds are blown by the wind as the branches and foliage of
trees. The difficult verse X. 28. 8. appears to refer to the clearing up
of the sky through the thunderstorm : " The gods came carrying axes,
splitting the clouds {vdna) ; they came with their attendants; they set
good wood in heaven, where there was refuse (perhaps ' underwood ' Pet.
Lex.) they burnt it up." The myth of the world-tree is apparently alluded
to in X. 135. 1., I. 24. 7., and I. 164. 20 ; cf. A. V. X. 7. 38.
2
18 The Building of the World.
* the two ancient dwelling-places/ heaven and earth,
in the different senses of the word, is a frequent topic
in the hymns. Thus we read of Indra, as the re-
presentative of the gods, " he it is who measured the
six broad spaces, from which no existing thing is
excluded; he it is who made the wide expanse of
earth and the lofty dome of the sky, even he ; " l and
again, with confusion of the measure and the thing
measured, "two measures are thine, 0 Indra, broad
and well-measured, the heaven by thy greatness and
the earth by thy skill." 2 The measuring instrument
is represented by the sun traversing the earth in
his course, and shooting his straight beams from East
to West. "Yaruna, standing in the region of the
air, measureth out the earth with the sun as with a
measuring-rod." 3 Hence the measurers of the world
par excellence are the sun- gods, as Vishnu, who
" measured the regions of the earth, and made fast the
dwelling-place on high, stepping forth, the mighty
strider, in three steps." The natural place to begin
the surveying is in the front of the house ; and so
the gods began their measurement of the earth from
the East. "Indra measured out (vimimaya) as it were
a house with measures from the front." 4 The idea
1 VI. 47. 3, 4. For the explanation of the ' six spaces ' and other
cosmographical references, see Appendix.
2 X. 29. 6.
» V. 85. 5.
4 pracah II. 15. 3., cf. VII. 99. 2. praclm kaMbham prithivyah.
Ike Measuring of the World. 19
of measuring is closely allied to that of spreading
out the earth, revealing it to the eyes of man, a
function also ascribed to the gods connected with the
sun and the lightning, in particular to Indra, Agni,
and the Maruts. The site seems to have been con-
secrated by being anointed with ghee,1 which in our
hymns represents the rain or light given by the gods.
The fathers (Manes; see Ch. III.) "anointed heaven
and earth to rule over them ; they measured them with
measuring- rods ; they made them fast and broad ; they
set the great worlds apart, firmly fixed for security." 2
Connected with the action of measuring is that of
setting in the corner-posts, frequently expressed by
a different form (mi) of the same root. The doors
of the cosmic house are the portals of the East
through which the morning light enters into the
world. " The Dawn shone with brilliance, and opened
for us the doors."3 The doors "open high and wide
with their frames." 4 They are broad as the earth,
" extending wide and above all, many in number,
yea very many ; through the doors flow the streams
of ghee."5 They are particularly glorified in the
Apri-hymns, as the gates through which the gods
approach, the arrangement of the place of sacri-
1 A. V. III. 12. l.
2 III. 38. 3., cf. I. 190. 2.
3 I. 113.4., IV. 51. 2., V. 45. 1.
4 ataih IX. 5. 5.
5 I. 188. 5.
20 The Building of the World.
fice being assimilated to the measurement of the
world. Lastly, the covering-in of the house with
cross-beams and a thatching of bamboo-canes is alluded
to negatively in the designation of the sky as the
beamless or the rafterless. " He was a clever workman
in the world who produced this heaven and earth, and
fixed the two regions of air in the beamless space." 1
The air is said to be woven in the trees or clouds.
"Thou, 0 Indra, didst fasten firmly the region of air
in the frame of heaven and earth." 2
The criterion of excellence in the human house
was the firmness and compactness of its structure.
So we are continually told of one god and another
how he holds the heaven and the earth fast; and the
security of the never-falling sky is a perpetual source
of wonder to the human builders. "Indra spread
out the broad earth, a great marvel, and supported
the sky, erect and mighty." "He supported the
heaven and the earth apart." " That which thou
makest secure is secure."3 The heaven is itself called
vidharman, or simply dhdrman, 'the support' or 'the
firmament.'4 But the compactness of the building
was useless unless the foundations were sure. " Savitar
1 avamgd IV. 56. 3., II. 15. 2.; askambhandX. 149. 1.; cf. Chund.
Up. 3. 1. 1.
3 V. 85. 2.; I. 56. 5.
3 VI. 17. 7. ; V. 29. 4. : VIII. 45. 6.
4 This sense seems necessary for dhdrman in VIII. 6. 20. The fuller
expression dhdrman divo dharune (X. 170. 2., V. 15. 2.), 'the sure firma-
ment of the sky ' or ' the support supporting the sky,' is abbreviated into
The Introduction of the Fire. 21
made the earth fast with bands." "Vishnu fixed it
on all sides with pegs." "Brihaspati supports firmly
in their places the ends of the earth."1 When all
was finished, the world was furnished with, gifts of
light, rain, and air.2
Such is a brief outline of the metaphor of the
house as it pictured itself to the lively fancy of the
poets. A more special characteristic of the mode of
thought in the Eigveda is the invariable introduction
into all cosmological conceptions of the fires of heaven
and earth, the sun, the lightning or the thunderbolt,
and the fire of sacrifice. The solar and meteoro-
logical explanations of mythology have been the sub-
ject of so much controversy of late that it is necessary
to call the reader's attention once for all to the fact
that the frequent references in this essay to the sun
and the lightning, as the natural phenomena upper-
most in the minds of the Eishis, are in no sense
solar or fulgural explanations of mythology, or of
the origins of the gods ; they merely draw attention
to the conceptions associated with different gods
(perhaps conventionally) in the Eigveda. The first act
of the Indian on entering his new house was the
introduction of the sacred fire, Agni, " who was ever
dhdrmani in III. 38. 2., and perhaps in I. 159. 3., cf. IX. 97. 22. For
vidharman see Grassmann's Lexicon ; Bergaigne contests this meaning
for vidharman also, La Religion vedique, III. 218. n. 2.
1 yantraih X. 149. 1. ; mayiikhaihVU. 99. 3. ; IV. 50. 1 ; cf. X. 89. 1#
2 I. 56. 5., III. 30. 11., II. 15. 2. etc.
22 The Building of the World.
to be worshipped in the house," "the master of the
house."1 The first act of the gods after the forma-
tion of the world was to produce the celestial Agni,
the sun or the lightning. From the hearth in the
middle of the house the flames and smoke streamed
up towards the roof, presenting the picture of a pillar
supporting the ceiling. Agni is " the head of
heaven and the navel of the earth ; " 2 he, as his
liquid counterpart, Soma, is 'the bearer of heaven'
and the support of the world. " He was set down
among men as a wise priest, welcome in the sacrifice
for his knowledge ; he shot up his straight light
like Savitar, and supported his smoke toward heaven
like a builder."3 The sun is the gold or bronzen
pillar of Mitra and Varuna's throne ; the sky itself
is compared to a firmly set pillar.4 This function
of Agni was symbolized by the erection of a post
in the place of sacrifice, the vanaspati of the Apri-
hymns, which was anointed with ghee to represent
his light.
The action of building the cosmic house, corre-
sponding to the rough work of the Indian peasant,
is attributed for the most part to the gods in
general, to Indra as the representative of the gods,
1 grihdpati, vdstosh pdtih. VII. 1. 2. cf. III. 1. 17.
s I. 59. 2.
8 IV. 6. 2. cf. IV. 13. 5., VI. 47. 5., X. 88. I., III. 5. 10.
1 V. 62. 7, 8.; V. 45. 2.
Tvashtar, the joiner. 23
or to Mitra and Varuna, as the ordainers of all
that is in the world. But there are other gods,
whose special character is based on their skill in
the finer works of the joiner's art, such as would
be delegated by the peasant to the professional
workman. These are Tvashtar and the Ribhus.
Tvashtar is the clever-handed carpenter- god, who,
in particular, manufactured with his hatchet the
thunderbolt of Indra, but also, in general, "adorned
heaven and earth, the parents, and all things with
their forms,"1 whence heaven and earth are called
1 the artificer's pair.' In the sacrifice he created
the hymn of praise, which is technically described
as a piece of joinery. " Tvashtar produced thee
(Brihaspati) from all existing things, from hymn
after hymn, the skilled artificer.2 He is also one
of the gods who generated the sacred fire.3 But
his chief contribution to the sacrifice is the soma,
Tvashtar's mead.4 His special function in the natural
world is the formation of the embryo in the womb,
whence he is regarded as the giver of children
and of increase in cattle.5 This function and its
connection with the soma will call for further treat-
ment in the next chapter. The menial character
1 X. 110. 9., IV. 42, 3., III. 55. 19. ; cf. V. 42. 13.
2 II. 23. 17.
3 X. 2. 7., 46. 9., I. 95. 2.
* I. 117. 22., cf. X. 53. 9.
5 I. 188. 9.
24 The Building of the World.
of Tvashtar's activity, and his association with the
harem of the gods, covered him with a certain
ridicule in the eyes of the Rishis. There is no hymn
devoted to his praise in the whole collection. Indra
is represented as surpassing him in his own special
department, the making of the soma or the rain in
the clouds : " I placed the bright milk in these cows,
which even god Tvashtar could not place in them."
"While a baby Indra stole the soma out of the bowls
in Tvashtar's house, where Tvashtar had tried to
hide it.1
The same view of the menial office of the divine
workmen is seen in the ascription to the Eibhus of
a human birth, and in , the conception that they
obtained their immortality by their service of the gods.
The praises of the Eibhus consist in enumerations
of a certain number of actions, expressed in fixed
mythological figures, the discussion of which lies
outside the scope of this essay. They make hymns
and soma like Tvashtar ; they produce the wonderful
chariot of the Acvins, and Indra's thunderbolt and
horses. They are even said in one place to have
fashioned the Acvins themselves,2 and they shape
the cow of plenty in the sky. It is said of a strong
king given to the people by the Maruts, as also of
the streams, that he was formed by Vibhvan, one
1 X. 49. 10. ; III. 48. 4., IV. 18. 3., I. 84. 15.
2 IV. 34. 9., cf. VI. 3. 8.
The Ribhus. 25
of their number.1 la particular, their renovating of
their aged and decrepid parents, and of the old cow,
which they reunited to her calf, would seem to refer
to the new birth of the world through, the recurrence
of the seasons ; and they are once said to have made
heaven and earth.2 We have the names of three
Ribhus ; but the varied character of their workings
in the different departments of nature is emphasized
by the mystic number, thrice seven, of their gifts,
and we find the expression ' all the Ribhus ' employed
as if of an indefinite number. Their names are
severally used in the plural ; and one passage has
the remarkable expression, 'Ribhu with the Ribhus,
Vibhva with the Vibhus, the powers with power/3
which can leave little doubt that the number of
these ' men of the air ' was in one form of their
legends as vague as that of the wonderful works of
nature. Indra figures as their chief, or, in the phrase
of the Rigveda, they are his sons ; he as a Ribhu
bestows gifts on man and beast.4
Two legends concerning the Ribhus deserve special
mention : their contest with Tvashtar, when they made
three cups for the soma from his one, and their
production of grass on the meadows by refreshing the
1 vibhvatashtd V. 58. 4., 42. 12.
2 IV. 34. 9.
3 ribhur ribhubhih .... vibhvo vibhubhih gdvasa qdvamsi. VII.
48. 2.
* IV. 37. 4., I. 121. 2.
26 The Building of the World.
earth with streams after twelve days' rest, as guests,
in the house of Agohya. In the first case we may
discover the explanation of Tvashtar's defeat in
the superior number of the Eibhus, representing the
conquest of a combination of inferior beings over a
single-handed mighty power. The legend is usually
explained as referring to the three worlds; it may
possibly refer merely to a change of ritual.1 The
Eibhus, as we shall see was the case with Tvashtar,
are brought into special connection with the sun, the
main agent of productiveness in nature. They are
* bright as the sun ' (siiracakshasa7i), the sons of
Sudhanvan, the 'good archer'; "with their father's
energy (taranitua) they obtained his wealth and
mounted up into the region of heaven ; " it is, in
particular, Savitar who befriends them and procures
them immortality ; and we read of " the dispositions
of the Eibhus according to the succession of the
dawns." 2
"We are thus brought to the end of the first ex-
planation of the formation of the world. The reader
cannot fail to have been struck with the disinterested,
objective character of the description ; the end of
creation is not man ; the Eishis do not question the
motive of the gods in forming the world. Divine
1 F. Neve, Essai sur le mythe des Ribhavas, Paris, 1847.
2 I. 110. 6., cf. IV. 33. 1. ; I. 110. 2, 3., cf. Ait. Br. 3. 3. 30. j
vidhana ribhunam IY. 51. 6.
The similarity of divine and human actions, 27
actions are magnified copies of human actions ; as,
therefore, a man must build his house, so the gods
have built the universal house. The similarity, we
may almost say the identity, of the divine and human
occupations, with this difference that the gods lack
the object for which men pursue their work, will be
also illustrated by the next chapter on generation
as a cosmological principle.
CHAPTER II.
GENERATION.
In the preceding chapter attention was drawn to the
familiar logical distinction between induction and
analogy or metaphor. It was shown by an illus-
tration how the metaphor, which in modern literature"
is employed as a figure of language, was in the
Rigveda of great importance as a mode of thought.
The present chapter will afford an illustration of
analogical reasoning. Analogy is the comparison
of effects or of classes of effects, which we are
unable to analyse, but which appear so similar as
to lead to the presumption that they are due to
similar causes. In formal expression this method
of reasoning usually makes use of a type, or par-
ticularly well-known and obvious example of the
class in which cause and effect are found to coexist ;
one striking instance is singled out as representative
of the process which seems to relate the cause to
the effect. In the argument which forms the
subject of this chapter the process which is described
is that of generation ; the type is the union of
light and water at dawn and in the thunderstorm;
Analogy. 29
the effect which, requires explanation is the origin
of the world.
"We have further seen in the description of
Agni as the pillar which supports the heavens
the importance of visible pictorial presentment in
cosmological speculation. It is the visible periodical
union of the two most antagonistic elements of
nature, fire and water, seen in the glistening dew
of the dawn, the brightness of the morning mist,
and the flash of lightning piercing the rain-cloud,
which explains the complicated sensuous symbolism
of those hymns in which the generation of the
world is described. We shall find that light or
warmth and moisture, the chief factors of genera-
tion in the cosmology of the Rigveda as in the
systems of the Ionic philosophers, are not here, as
they are there, the primary elements out of which the
world formed itself, but are always bound up with
the phenomena of the sky, the sun in the clouds,
and the lightning in the rain. In illustration of
this the chapter before us will treat first of the birth
of the sun as the type of all subsequent births, next of
the action of fire or light and water as productive
agencies, and lastly of the general principle of
generation as applied to explain the origin of the
world.
There are three principal applications of the metaphor
of parentage in the Rigveda, temporal, generic, and
local. In the temporal sense it expresses the
30 Generation.
appearance of one phenomenon before another ; the
dawn is the mother of the sun and of the morning
sacrifice, the night is the mother of the morning,1
and the like. The parent may correspond to an
efficient cause, as when the Maruts, the gods of the
storm-cloud, are said to give birth to darkness, or
again to the material cause, expressing the trans-
formation of one object into another, as when the
rain is said to be born of the cloud.2
Again, the father is head and representative of the
sons of the family, as the mother of the daughters ;
his personality is continued in them.3 Thus the
metaphor obtains a generic sense, expressing the most
prominent member of a group ; Vayu is the father of
the winds, or of the storm-gods, Rudra is the father
of the Maruts and Rudras, soma of the plants and
of the prayers ; Sarasvati is the mother of the rivers.
The sons may be considered as inheriting the qualities
of the father, as when Tvashtar's epithet ligvdrupa
is separated from him and becomes the name of his
son ; 4 or again, as in the Semitic languages, the
place of the father may be occupied by an abstract
quality, as when Agni, the Maruts and others are
i VII. 78. 3. ; I. 123. 9.
2 VII. 94. 1.
3 II. 33. 1.
4 yad etaj jnyate 'patyam sa evayam iti f>'utih} u according to the
Veda the offspring which is born to a man is the man himself." — Maha-
bharata, ^antip. 10862; cf. Brihadar. Up. 2. 1. 7.
Parentage. 31
called 'the sons of strength/ or Pushan who sets
men ' in a large place ' is called * the child of
setting free/ and Indra the child of cow-getting.1
Lastly, the metaphor has a local sense. The quiver
is called the father of the arrows,2 carrying them as
a father carries his child in his arms. The earth
is the mother of the trees and of all things that she
bears on her broad bosom, and the heaven the father
of all things that move in the sky, the sun, the
Maruts, morning and evening.3
But heaven and earth do not merely contain all
things, they also supply the nourishment by which
they grow; the harvest-time, for instance, can be
called the child of the earth.4 The transition is easy
from the local application of the metaphor to the
temporal. Heaven and earth are the dwelling-places
in which all births take place, they are also the first-
born in the beginning, of equal age and common
origin ; or, what amounts to the same thing, the
question is mooted, which of the two could have been
the older ; 5 or again, by a characteristic confusion
1 vimuco napat I. 42. 1., VI. 55. 1. ; goshano napat IV. 32. 22. We
may perhaps trace the incipient misconception of this idiom, which does
not belong to the later language, in the explanation of the phrase sdhasas
put) ah as applied to Agni from the force exercised in rubbing the fire-
sticks (V. 11. 6.). "VVe must not, however, interpret the etymological
fancies of the Rishis too seriously.
2 VI. 75. 5.
3 I. 185. 2.
4 I. 173. 3.
6 I. 186. 1.
32 Generation.
of thought, they are represented as the two fruitful
parents, who produced the world for their offspring.1
The difficulty at once arose of fixing the relation
of heaven and earth as the universal parents to the
gods, who, from another point of view, have also
a claim to be considered the fathers of the world.
The Rishis contented themselves with a favourite
paradox : the children begat their parents. " Indra
begat his father and his mother from his own
body."2
The first-born of heaven and earth is the sun.
This birth is one of the most frequent topics of the
Rigveda, hinted at for the most part rather than
described in a series of complicated riddles playing
perpetually on the identification of the three kinds
of Agni, in the sun, the lightning, and the fire or
soma of the sacrifice ; on the comparison of heaven
and earth to the two rubbing-sticks that produced
the fire, or to the two stones between which the
soma was pressed ; and other recondite parallelisms
enriching the formal expression more than the
meaning of the hymns. A great source of perplexity
in the interpretation is the confusion of the dawns
or night and morning, which give birth to the sun,3
with the waters, the mists of the sky or the rain-
clouds which carry the embryo of the lightning.
1 I. 159. 2.
2 I. 159. 3.,X. 54. 3.
3 V. 1. 4.
The Light and the Waters. 33
They are both alike represented as the cows of
Agni, his mothers, his nurses, sisters, or wenches.
The light itself is considered as a liquid, as in the
familiar English expressions a ' stream ' or ' flood of
light/ ' pouring light/ " The sun mounts upon a
liquid flood." l
The centre-point of the theory of cosmological
generation, as has been said, is the combination of
the light with the waters, which presented itself to
the eyes of the poets in the birth of the lightning
from the rain-cloud, and in the exhalations which
surround the light of the sun. Agni has his home
in the waters; he is 'the child of the waters/ 'the
one eye of heaven, who grows by the action of the
streams/ 2 The reference to the lightning is suf-
ficiently obvious ; the part played by the sun in the
paradox, apart from such general expressions as 'the
waters about the sun ' contrasted with the waters
below on earth, is described as the shooting or
weaving of his rays through the waters of heaven.3
The allusion to the dew is established by the close
connection of the dawn with the waters, in which
she is represented as bathing. 4 The marriage of
the sky with the earth, the father and mother of
the sun, presented itself in two ways. First, the sky
1 VII. 60. 4.= V. 45.10.
2 IX. 9. 4., where Soma represents the sun ; I. 23. 17.
s III. 22. 3., X. 27. 21.; VII. 47, 4., IV. 38. 10., X. 178. 3.
* VI. 64. 4., I. 124. 5., 48. 3; V. 80. 5.
3
34 Generation.
embraces the earth on all sides, and both are united
in the twilight of the East before the dawn. Secondly,
the fall of the rain and the shedding of light in
the form of sunshine or lightning are the visible
causes of the fertilization of the. soil. The sun
draws the dew as milk from his mother earth, and
obtains his light, which as we have seen is also
regarded as a liquid, from his father the sky.1
These two, the light and the dew or rain, are inter-
changeably represented as milk or semen, celestial
ambrosia, ghee,2 or soma- juice.
The conception of the rising sun in the morning
dew is personified in the figure of Gandharva,
a discussion of whose character will be the best
illustration of the birth of the sun as the type
of generation. In the only entire hymn which is
addressed to him, he receives the name of Yena,
which occurs again in I. 83. 5. as an epithet of the
rising sun. In other passages it is translated by
the St. Petersburg Lexicon ' longing, desire (or
desirous), wish. ' It is used as an epithet of the
dawns, of Soma, and of Brihaspati, and seems to
be applied also to the songs or the singers. The
hymn describes in a succession of poetical images
his rise from the morning mist up to the sky, where
his light is merged in the all-embracing brilliance
of the heavens.
1 I. 160. 3., IV. 3. 10., X. n. l.
2 IV. 58.
Vena. 35
X. 123. 1. "Vena, born in light, hath driven
hither the calves of the speckled cow in the chariot
of the air;1 at the meeting of the sun with the
waters, the singers caress (lit. 'lick') him here as
a child with hymns.
2. Yena stirreth a ripple from out the (aerial) sea ; 2
the child of the clouds hath appeared along the ridge
of the bright sky;3 on high, on the summit of nature's
course, he shone ; and the hosts sang to the bosom of
their common father (the sky).
3. The many mothers of the calf, who have one
home,4 were there, exulting in their common child ;
rising to the summit of nature's course the songs sip
(lit. lick) the sweet ambrosia.
4. The singers knowing his form yearned for him ;
they have found the roar of the wild buffalo (Soma) ;
performing the sacrifice they are come to the stream.
Gandharva hath found the forms of ambrosia.
5. Apsaras, the maiden, smiling on her paramour,
beareth him in high heaven ; he is come as a loved
one to the bosom of his loved one ; 5 he settleth
there upon his golden wing, even Yena.
6. As with longing in their hearts (venantah) they
gaze on thee, as a bird flying up to heaven, the gold-
1 cf. II. 40. 3. The force of aydm is ' Behold here.'
2 cf. IV. 58. 1, 11.
3 cf. VIII. 100. 5.
4 The dawns cf. VII. 2. 5., or, as Ludwig suggests, the waters. The
two are, as has heen said, practically indistinguishable.
5 i.e. his father, the sky; cf. V. 47. 3., III. 1. 9., VIII. 69. 7.
36 Generation.
winged messenger of Varuna, to Yama's home, a
soaring eagle ;
7. Upright hath Gandharva mounted into the sky-
pointing his glancing weapons ; clad in a sweet-
smelling mantle, beautiful to look upon, he produceth
fair forms as the light.1
8. When as a drop 2 he cometh to the aerial ocean,
gazing with a vulture's eye in heaven, his light
rejoicing in its gleaming brilliance worketh bright-
ness in the highest region."3
Similar references to Gandharva as the rising
sun occur in I. 163. 2., where he holds the bridle
of the horse of the sun ; and in X. 177. 2., where he
sings the morning song of the sun -bird ; " the bird
beareth a song in his heart, Gandharva sang it
while yet in the womb;'* " Gandharva mounts up
to the sky, he beholds all the forms of Soma, his
light shines abroad with gleaming brilliance, he illu-
1 surabhi appears to be a play on the word gandhd, occurring in the
name Gandharva. The third pada is applied to Indra in VI. 29. 3.,
including the comparison with svdr. That this comparison is no
hindrance to the identification of Gandharva with the sun is proved by
I. 50. 5., where it is applied to surya.
2 Ludwig and Grassmann translate drapsd 'spark': "drops of fire
are sparks."— Pet. Lex. s.v. Cf. (^at. Br. IV. 1. 1. 25.
3 Literally, " worketh fairness in itself ; " cf. arunHni krinvan of
Vata X. 168. 1. The interpretation given above is the one which appears
to me to agree best with the different images occurring in the hymn, and
with the other references to Gandharva, and is confirmed by A. V. II. 1.,
IV. 1. ; Grassmann in his translation, vol. ii. p. 400, inclines to connect
Gandharva with the rainbow. The difference between the two interpreta-
tions scarcely affects the argument of the following pages.
The Gandharvas and Apsarases. 37
minates heaven and earth, the parents, brilliantly." l
The Gandharvas receive the epithet vai/itkega, * whose
hair is as the wind/ or ' is borne upon the wind '
(III. 38. 6., see next chapter) ; and in X. 139. 4-6.
Gandharva Vicviivasu is addressed as "the heavenly
Gandharva, measuring the realm of the air."
Our hymn illustrates the two senses in which the
sun is brought into connection with the waters ; first,
as penetrating with his beams the watery masses of
the sky, and secondly, in the assimilation of his
light to the waters, as soma or ambrosia, whence
the depths of light become the aerial ocean. This
association is stereot}'ped in the union of the
Gandharvas and the Apsarases, a type of marriage,
and in the later mythology of sexual enjoyment.
An Apsaras, dpya yoshd,2 ' the water-nymph/ is
mentioned in X. 10. 4. as having given birth with
Gandharva to Yama, the progenitor of the human
race, in the waters ; and Vasishtha, in a late hymn,
VII. 33. verse 12, is represented as born from an
Apsaras. Through his connection with the light
and the waters Gandharva finds his parallel in the
soma, which symbolizes at the same time the
fructifying waters of heaven and liquid light. The
identification of the two is most striking in IX.
85. 9-12, a hymn addressed to Soma, where the
1 IX. 85. 12.
2 X. 11. 2. is obscure.
38 Generation.
expressions used of Gandharva Vena in X. 123. are
with small modifications transferred to Soma. In
IX. 86. 36. Soma is called "the heavenly Gandharva
of the waters, whose eye is over men {nricdkshasam,
but see note 6 on page 68), born to rule over all
created things : " " the daughter of the sun brought
the soma, Gandharva received it." " Gandharva it
is who protecteth the place of Soma, who guardeth
the birthplaces of the gods, where he is invisible."
"The wise (singers) sip with their songs the rich
milk of heaven and earth on the sure place of the
Gandharva."1 On the other hand, in VIII. 1. 11.
and 66. 5. he figures as the gaoler of the soma,
and is smitten like Tvashtar by Indra, who sets
the sun free. In IX. 78. 3. the Apsarases appear
in the same relation to Soma as to Gandharva.2
"We can now understand the significance of
Gandharva in the marriage ceremony. The light of the
sun is considered as a main fructifying influence, not
only in the trees and plants, but also in the human
womb, as when it is said of Vishnu, that he brings
the parents together for rich fruitfulness, that he
protects the embryo in the womb, and forms the
female breast; of Pushan, that he grants brides to
his worshippers and has given birth to all things ; and
of the Acvins, that they have placed the embryo in
1 IX. 113. 3.; IX. 83. 4. ; I. 22. 14. ; cf. X. 80. 6. ; IV. 58. 4., V. S.
XII. 98.
3 cf. X. 30. 5.
Surya. 39
all things.1 The waters alone, especially as personified
in Parjanya, the god of the rain-cloud, will be shown
* later to bear the same character. Gandharva repre-
sents the union of these two influences. We pass
on to the other forms in which this union of the
light or the sun with the waters or the dawn is
expressed. In verses 40 and 41 of the classical
marriage hymn, or rather collection of marriage
formulae, X. 85, Surya, the typical bride, the daughter
of the sun, the dawn who rides in the chariot of
the Acvins, is given in marriage first to Soma,2 then
to Gandharva, next to Agni, and lastly to the child
of man. In VI. 58. 3, 4, it is another sun-god,
Pushan, to whom the gods gave Surya as a bride.3
Soma and Pushan are associated together in II. 40 as
two cosmogonic powers giving birth to the world.
Again, as we have seen Gandharva called the father
of Yama, so Vivasvat, a name of the sun or of the
lightning, is frequently mentioned as his father ; thus
1 I. 155. 3. ; VII. 36. 9., X. 184. 1., IX. 67. 10-12; I. 157. 5.
2 Compare verse 9. " Soma was trie bridegroom, the Acvins the two
interceders, when Savitar gave the willing bride Surya to her lord."
Soma is usually explained in this hymn in its later application as a name
of the moon. The different formulae here collected into one hymn cannot
be considered as all dating from the same period. The association of
Soma with the sun-gods points to the conclusion that he lias here the
same significance as in other hymns of the Rigveda, though many verses
of this hymn and their compilation may be of later date. There is a
doubt in verses 21 and 22 whether we should explain Gandharva Vicvavasu
as the protector of virgins, or, as in the later literature, the violator of
virgins.
3 cf. X. 85. 26, 27., VI. 55. 4.
40 Generation.
the union of Surya with Gandharva finds its parallel
in the union of Tvashtar's daughter Saranyu (ace.
to Sonne, the storm-cloud ; ace. to Prof. M tiller, the
dawn) with Yivasvat, the fruit of which is Yama.1
The nature of Tvashtar's character was, as we have
seen, so indefinite that he might have been introduced
as an agent in any natural phenomena, which were
regarded as products of artistic skill. His special
function was the formation of the embryo in the
womb, and it is in this connection that we observe
his approximation to the lightning and still more
to the sun. We have seen that he is the handi-
workman who made Indra's thunderbolt and the
soma. He is very frequently associated with the
goddesses of heaven, the Gnas, among whom we find,
mention in verse VII. 34. 22., of Eodasi and Varunani
the female counterparts of Rudra and Varuna, and
also of Aramati, the goddess of prayer.2 He is invoked
to make the marriage union fruitful and to grant
increase of cattle. He is the father.3 His approxima-
tion to the sun is seen in the combination of his
name with Savitar's. The two are invoked together
in XI. 81. 4. Under the triple name Tvashtar Savitar
Vicvarupa, where the epithet rigvdrupa serves to
emphasize the reference to the light,4 he is said to
1 X. 17. l, 2.
2 Compare V. 43. 6. with VII. 34. 21.
3 III. 4. 9., VII. 34. 20., X. 184. 1. ; I. 188. 9. ; X. 64. 10.
4 See Grassmann's Lex. s.v. ; cf. Chand. Up. 5. 13. 1.
The Type of Generation. 41
have nourished and given birth to all existing things.
Further, the same name appears to be used inter-
changeably with that of Gandharva for the father of
Yama and Yami; and Tvashtar receives the epithet
a griy a, the first-born.1 We have thus arrived at the
following complication in the matrimonial relations
of the sun-gods : Gandharva, Agni, Soma, Pushan,
Tvashtar, and Vivasvat are all represented as the
bridegrooms of Surya, the daughter of the sun, or
of Saranyu, the daughter of Tvashtar. The Rishis
were not, however, content with the attainment of
this bizarre result of their symbolisms ; they delight
in describing the complication in its most paradoxical
form, that the father married his own daughter, and
with her gave birth to the universe.2 We are thus
brought back to the point from which we started,
the union of the light with the waters confused
with the marriage of the sun, the first-born, with the
dawn, and regarded as the type of generation in
the world.
We now proceed to the discussion of the principal
hymns, among the most difficult in the Rigveda,
in which the figurative generation of the world is
described. The first hymn X. 72. contains the
barest outlines of a cosmogony, the details of which
remain in obscurity. There are two interpolations
1 X. 10. 5.; I. 13. 10.
2 V. 42. 13., and especially X. 61., I. 164. 33.
42 Generation.
in the hymn (verses 2, and 6, 7) ; the original
verses, which are especially closely connected together,
admit more readily than in most hymns of separation
from the interpolations.
1. "Let us now proclaim with admiration the
births of the gods, in utterances of praise, that a
man may hear them (lit. see) in a later age.1
3. In the first age of the gods the existent was
born from the non-existent ; after that the regions
(of the sky) were born from the begetter (the sky).2
4. The earth was born from the begetter, the
regions (of the earth) from the earth. From
Aditi Daksha was born, and again from Daksha
Aditi.
5. Even Aditi had a birth, for she is thy daughter,
Daksha ; after her the blessed gods were born, of
immortal parentage.
8. Eight in number are the sons which were born
of Aditi, from her body ; she went forth to meet
the gods with seven, and cast the bird (Martanda)
away.3
9. With seven sons Aditi went forth to meet the
1 For pag in the sense of 'hear,' cf. X. 71. 4. Or we may translate
with Delbriick, Altindische Tempuslehre, p. 14, 'whoever' or 'as one
who seeth in a later age.' For the construction cf. VIII. 6. 18.
2 The meaning of the air. dp. uttandpadah is quite uncertain ; utland is
used as an epithet of bhiimi, but this proves nothing for uttandpad. If we
take the word as masculine, and refer it to the sky, we obtain with bhd a
pair corresponding to Daksha and Aditi in the next two verses.
3 " The exposure of Martanda (Surya) refers apparently only to his
sweeping through the sky (icpdri prakshipat)" — Ludwig.
The Worlds formed from Dust. 4$
earliest age, she brought the bird thither to be born
and die again."
The interpolated verses are —
2. " Brahmanaspati welded these worlds together
like a smith ; in the earliest age of the gods the
existent was born from the non-existent " (cf. X.
81. 3.).
6. "When ye, 0 gods, stood firmly embracing one
another in the formless depth, thence there arose from
your feet a thickening volume of dust as from dancers.
7. When ye, 0 gods, like the Yatis, made all things
to grow, then ye brought forward the sun, which
was hidden in the sea."
The two verses 6 and 7 are interesting as containing
an independent story of the origin of the world :
the gods are said to have kicked up in dancing the
atoms which formed the earth. We may also notice
the usual mention of the production of the sun as
soon as heaven and earth were made. The nearest
parallel to this passage in the Rigveda is X. 24.
4, 5., addressed to the Acvins : " You two strong
and cunning ones produced by churning (as with
a fire-drill) the two (worlds) that face one another.
When, 0 Niisatya (Agvins), worshipped by Vimada,
ye produced them by churning, all the gods yearned
as the two (worlds) facing one another fell away.
1 0 Nasatya,' spake the gods, ■ bring them here
again.' " Apparently the Acvins stirred up the dust,
which formed heaven and earth, and the gods were
44 Generation.
so pleased with the production that they wished to
have them formed into solid masses.1 Similarly in
I. 22. 17. the earth seems to have been formed from
the dust of Vishnu's three strides across the heavens.
The passages are, however, too isolated to admit of
anything more than conjectures ; we return to the
body of the hymn.
The mention of the non-existent and the existent
merely introduces the subject of origins, as will be
shown at the end of this chapter. The hymn contains
three moments; first, the birth of the three worlds,
heaven, earth, and the intermediate regions ; next,
parallel to the birth of the worlds, the birth of the
gods from their first parents ; lastly, the rise and
setting of the sun, represented by the figure of
Martanda. That martdndd has the meaning 'bird'
is proved by II. 38. 8. ; the word is perhaps here
chosen in allusion to the semi-divinity and semi-
mortality of the rising and setting sun. The relation
of Aditi to Daksha remains to be discussed. The
general meaning of the word daksha is * active
energy ' ; it is applied three times to the Ribhus ;
it is used of the production of hymns at the sacrifice ;
it is opposed to sickness ; and occasionally it has the
sense of malevolent activity. The personification of
Daksha as well as of Aditi is most probably to be
traced in the hymns themselves to an old idiom of
1 cf. Ait. Br. IV. 4. 27.
Aditi and Daksha. 45
the Yedic language. In VIII. 25. 5. Mitra and
Varuna are called u the children of strength, and
the sons of daksha" i.e. the strong and active ones.
The expressions are common, and translators are
agreed as to their meaning. "We find now that the
description of Indra as ' son of strength/ gave rise
to the conception of a goddess Qavasi, his mother ; l
and it is scarcely less certain that Daksha, an
unimportant deity whose only characteristic in the
Rigveda is his fatherhood of the gods, has derived
his personality from similar expressions.2 The analogy
of these two figures suggests at once a like explanation
of the origin of the motherhood of Aditi. The mother-
hood of the gods is the only constant and certain attri-
bute of Aditi. Aditi and Daksha are mentioned together
again in X. 5. 7. and 64. 5., a recurrence which
confirms the derivation of both from a like origin.
The history of the word may have been somewhat as
follows. It was used in pre-vedic times as an abstract
word meaning ' freedom from bondage/ if the generally
accepted etymology be correct. The determination
of the sons of Aditi as a class of gods was caused
by the association of the expression with particular
gods. The dditeh putrah, ' the unfettered gods, '
became the sons of Aditi, and from this later sense
the name Aditya was derived. There is no proof
1 putrah qdvasah VIII. 92. 14. ; qdvasah sunuh IY. 24. 1. ; Cavasi
X. 153. 2. cf. note 1 on page 31.
2 v. s. v. ddkshapitar Pet. Lex. cf. IX. 87. 2.
46 Generation.
that at the time when our hymns were composed the
word still bore the supposed etymological meaning of
'freedom from bondage/ It is used as an adjective and
as a substantive in so many and varied connexions
that no single conception has yet been proposed
sufficiently elastic to suit all its applications. The
ambiguity of meaning will be explained if we suppose
that after the word had become a proper name it
was employed anew, in the same way and in much
the same sense as the appellative asura, with a vague
sense of a grand divine significance.1 In IX. 74. 5.
it is Soma who placed the fruit in Aditi's womb,
through which we obtain children and grandchildren.
The next passage which will occupy our attention
is a fragment, X. 31. 7-10. "Whether it come from
the same poet who wrote the preceding six verses
of the hymn or no, the connection of thought is
sufficiently loose for us to treat these four verses
alone. The subject is the first birth of the sun.
1 A collection of passages will be found in Professor A. Hillebrandt's
monograph, Ueber die Gtittin Aditi, Breslau, 1876. The parallelism of
dditi and asura is seen in the application of both words principally to
persons (Hillebrandt, I.e. p. 15) : in the similarity of the derivatives
from the two words, adititvd and asuralvd, cidityd and asura, diti and
sura : and in such passages as IV. 1. 20. compared with III. 3. 4. ;
V. 44. 11. with X. 74. 2. ; VII. 51. 1. with X. 50. 3. ; I. 89. 10. with
YI. 36. 1. ; V. 59. 8., X. 63. 3. with I. 131. 1.; cf. also X. 67. 2.,X.
10. 2. As dditi is the cow, so asura is in III. 38. 4. and V. 12. 1. an
epithet of vrishan. The fluctuating attributes of the goddess Aditi, as
distinguished from those attributes which are derived from her mother-
hood, are, for the most part, borrowed directly from the Adityas.
The Birth of the Sun. 47
"7. What indeed was the wood? What too was
that tree, from which, they fashioned the heaven
and the earth? They two stand fast and grow
not old for ever, while many days and mornings
wax old.
8. There is no other thing besides like unto him ;
he is the bull that beareth heaven and earth ; of
his own power he maketh his skin a source of
light,1 when the bay horses carry him as the sun.
9. As a Stega over the ground so he passeth over
the earth ; 2 he penetrateth the world, as the wind
scattering a mist; there, where Mitra and Varuna
are, he when anointed hath shot abroad his light, as
Agni in the wood (i.e. at sacrifice).
10. When the barren cow (the earth) beareth,
immediately on being anointed she maketh her
insecure paths secure (at daybreak), who hath her
own herdsman (or herself her own herdsman) ; when
the first son is born from his parents, the cow
devoureth the placenta (?) which they seek." 3
The verses deal with the formation of the three
1 Compare suryatvac. The Pet. Lex. translates pavitra ' sieve.' It
would then signify the filter through which the heams of the sun stream.
The literal meaning of the word is ' instrument of illumination or purifi-
cation.' A similar passage is I. 160. 3.
2 Thus the grammatical parallelism of the first and second padas is
complete. The Stega is a biting or stinging insect.
3 The sense of vydthih in all passages is 'an insecure going.' For our
passage cf. II. 35. 5., II. 4. 7. The Pet. Lex. and Grassmann take the
word gamyam as equivalent to gdmyam, ' a plug or peg.' The original
reading may possibly have been some such word as jarayu (? qdmalam),
48 Generation.
main components of the universe, heaven, earth, and
the sun. Of the first two the poet has little to
tell us, and passes on at once to the third. The
sun is identified with the bull, Agni of the sacrifice,
and the earth with the lower rubbing-stick anointed
with ghee, which is licked up as soon as fire is struck.
The next hymn is again a description of the rise
of the sun, his birth in the east; the cosmogonic
significance of the hymn does not appear till the
last verse, which may be regarded as the climax
of the whole, or may be but an afterthought. The
allusions do not admit of certain explanation. I add
the interpretations which seem to me the most
plausible.
X. 5. 1. "The one sea (the sun) bearing rich
treasures, producing many births, is to us all a sight
of gladness. He sucketh the teat on the breast of
his hidden parents ; in the midst of the fount (source
of light in the East) is placed the home of the bird.
2. The strong, lusty horses dwelling in a common
stall come together with the mares (light and
waters). The wise (the rays, see Chapter III.) guard
the home of nature's order, they assume excellent
forms in secret.
3. The two cunning ones (heaven and earth) who
which would yield a suitable antecedent to ydd and give an intelligible
sense, cf. A. V. VI. 49. 1. With starir ydd sdta compare VII. 101. 3.
starh- a tvad bhdvati, suta u tvat, where the reference to the earth is still
clearer.
The Rise of the Sun. 49
follow nature's order unite ; they form and give birth
to the child, nourishing him, the centre of all that
is fixed and that moveth, weaving1 with insight the
thread of the wise.
4. For the tracks of nature's course and the juices
(dews and light) for refreshment follow the goodly
child from of old; heaven and earth, clothing them-
selves in a mantle, are strengthened by the rich
nourishment of the sweet drink.
5. His seven glowing sisters (rays and waters) as
a lover the understanding one bringeth forth from
the sweet drink to be seen ; he who is of ancient
birth halteth in the sky, and seeking hath found
the dome of heaven.2
6. The (seven) wise ones (rays) fashion seven lines,
to one of these may the distressed mortal come.3
The support of life in the home of the highest, at
the divergence of the ways, standeth on sure ground.
1 Read vdyanti, cf. II. 3. 6. For the thought compare VI. 9.
2 The rendering of vavrim pilshandsya is a paraphrase. The context
leads us to expect an expression of the journey of the sun up towards the
zenith. The word pushand is an an. elp. If we retain the text as it
stands, Pushan's covering will he probably the sphere of his movement.
For vavri compare IV. 42. 1. and X. 4. 4.
3 The 'distressed' one, lit. 'compressed,' is the mortal longing for
daybreak. The • lines ' maryadah are the beams of light ; the word
occurs again in IV. 5. 13. along with vaytind (pi.), a word with a similar
development of meaning ; compare also saptdraynin. These beams
diverge as paths from the point where the sun stands, I. 46. 11. When
the sun is just rising there are two paths, the dark and the light, III.
55. 15. Ludwig renders the word here • ways,' but assigns to it a moral
significance following Sayana.
4
50 Generation.
7. The non-existent and the existent are in highest
heaven in the birthplace of Daksha, in Aditi's lap.
Agni is our firstborn of nature's order, and in the
beginning of life a lusty bull."
In the next hymn a sun-god is glorified as the
great power of the universe, from which all other
powers and existences, divine and earthly, are derived,
a conception which is the nearest approach to the
later mystical conception of Brahma, the creator of
the world. The hymn is addressed to Hiranyagarbha,
the gold- germ, who in the last verse is addressed as
Prajapati, the prototype and lord of things born.
The name Hiranyagarbha marks the association of
the conception with the light; the other references
to the sun in the hymn are equally clear; but the
god is already beginning to be abstracted into an
independent figure, though tentatively as appears
from the refrain.
X. 121. I.1 "Hiranyagarbha (gold-germ) was formed
in the beginning ; when born he was the sole lord of
being. He holdeth fast the heaven here and the
earth ; what god shall we honour with sacrifice ? 2
2. Who giveth breath and giveth strength ; whose
prescriptions all the gods perform ; whose (light and)
shadow is immortality and death ; 3 what god shall
we honour with sacrifice?
1 Translated by Prof. Max Miiller, Hibbert Lectures, p. 295.
2 A similar phrase occurs in X. 168. 4., VIII. 48. 13.
3 Ludwig translates chat/5 here ' Glanz,' Grassmann ■ Schattenbild.'
The Gold-germ. 51
3. Who by his power is become sole king of the
living world, that breath eth and slurabereth ; who
ruleth over its men and beasts; what god shall we
honour with sacrifice ?
4. Who by his power, they tell us, possesseth
these snowy mountains, and the sea with the Rasa
(a mythical river) ; whose arms are these regions ;
what god shall we honour with sacrifice ?
5. Through whom the strong heaven and the earth
are made secure,1 through whom the realm of light
is supported, and the vault of the sky, who traverseth
the air in the middle region ; what god shall we
honour with sacrifice ?
6. To whom the two battle-hosts, sustained by
his support, looked up as they trembled in spirit,
there where the risen sun shines ; 2 what god shall
we honour with sacrifice ?
7. When the august waters went, receiving the
germ of all and producing fire ; thence arose the
living spirit of the gods [which is one];3 what god
shall we honour with sacrifice ?
8. Who surveyed with power the mighty waters,
when they received productive energy (ddksha) and
1 Ludwig and Grassmann take ugra as a predicate : but in that con-
struction the sense of the word ' actively strong, fresh,' makes a poor
parallel to driljia and stabhitdm.
3 The battle begins at dawn. The expression is applied to Indra in II.
12. 8. Dadhikra, the rising sun in the form of a war-horse, is similarly-
invoked by contending armies; IV. 38. 5., 39. 5.
3 Two syllables extra ; ekah is suspicious.
Y
52 Generation.
begat sacrifice ; who alone is god over the gods ;
what god shall we honour with sacrifice ?
9. Let not the begetter of the earth harm us,
nor he who hath begotten the heaven, whose ordinance
is sure, who hath begotten the mighty and shining
waters ; what god shall we honour with sacrifice ?
[10. Prajapati, no other than thou is become lord
over all these productions ; grant us our desire when
we call upon thee ; may we be possessors of wealth.] "*
The hymn is an enumeration by a wearisome
repetition of the relative pronoun of the general
characteristics of a great god. We look, therefore,
for the most special attributes in the first few verses.
Hiranyagarbha, ' the gold-germ, ' is born in the
beginning, giving life and strength, typifying life
and death, king of the breathing and slumbering
world, whose arms are the regions of the sky. In
other passages Prajapati is invoked for fruitful increase
of children, or of cattle, and once he is identified
with Soma.2 Savitar also receives the title bhuvanasi/a
prajdpatih, 'the prajapati of the world/ It could
not be expected that such a conception as that of
1 The last verse is not divided up in the pada recension ; this fact and
the absence of the refrain would seem to prove the verse a later addition.
Grassmann is not therefore strictly correct in describing the hymn as
addressed to Prajapati, and treating hiranyagarbha as a mere appellative.
Later mythology would incline us to discover in Hiranyagarbha a reference
to the mythical primeval egg ; there is, however, no passage in the
Rigveda, except perhaps I. 130. 3., to support such a reference.
2 X. 85. 43., 184. 1., 169. 4. : IX. 5. 9.
The Sim as Supreme Deity. 53
Hiranyagarbha would be limited to the sun, and
indeed in later times the connection with^the sun
sank into obscurity ; but that this connection was
as vividly present to the minds of the]] poets as in
the case of Savitar is established by [this hymn and
the references to Prajapati which have been cited.
The following passages will further show that, in-
dependently of this name, the sun was in] process
of elevation to the position of \ supreme*] and only
god which was afterwards occupied by Brahma, the
creator. In I. 115. 1. the sun is called " the life
(atmdn) of all that moveth and standeth." " They
call it Indra, Mitra, Yaruna, Agni, and it is the
strong-winged bird (Garutmat) of the sky ; though
it is one (ekam sat), the poets address it in many
ways ; they call it Agni, Yama, and Mataricvan."
11 The wise singers in their utterances ascribe to the
strong- winged bird, which is but one (ekam sdntam),
many forms."1
We have thus seen the sun not only figure as
the main type and agent of generation in the world,
but, owing to the important place which it occupies
in cosmological speculations, even regarded as the
most divine of all the gods, embracing in himself
their most godlike functions and attributes, including
the attribute of creator. The next step was easily
taken. As he was the first of things born, so he
1 I. 164. 46., X. 114. 5., cf. V. 3. 1., 13. 6., TO 10. 2.
54 Generation.
is represented as the Unborn (ajd). The characteristic
creative functions of Aja, the Unborn, are indicated
to us in two passages in the clearest manner in
which characteristic functions can be indicated, that
is to say, by comparison of other gods with him.
In I. 67. 5. Agni is said to have made fast the earth,
like the Unborn, to have supported the sky with
effective utterances. In VIII. 41. 10. it is Varuna
who " measured out the ancient dwelling-place, and
made heaven and earth fast, and the sky with a
support like the Unborn.' " The hymn to Hiranya-
garbha supplies us also with a clue to the next two
passages. "It rested on the navel of the Unborn,
that alone (Mam) in which all existing things
abide ; " " he who supported these six regions of
the air in the form of the Unborn, what is that
one?"1
It was stated at the beginning of this chapter that
the element fire was not regarded in the Rigveda
as a material out of which the world was made.
This is the more striking when we consider how
large a proportion of the book is directly addressed
to Agni in his varied character as embodying the
different kinds of fire and light. The passages which
1 X. 82. 6., I. 164. 6. If this Aja is to be identified with Aja
Ekapad, in X. 65. 13. the bearer of heaven, the ascription of one foot to
the sun might be due to his appearance alone in the sky as opposed to the
dawns and the Acvins, cf. VIII. 41. 8. His association with Ahi
Budhnya would then be accounted for by the play on the word ajd, ' goat.'
The Cosmogonic Influence of Agni. 55
approach nearest to a cosmogonic significance are
those in which Agni shows most clearly the side of
his character which represents the light and warmth
of the sun. He is said to place the embryo in
existing things; or he is himself the embryo of the
waters, of the trees, of things standing still and
moving ; he places the germ in plants and in all
things existing, he produces generation on the earth
and in women; he enters the plants, and mounts
up in them ; he is the herdsman of the nations, the
generator of the worlds and all existing things are
offshoots from him.1 There is, however, one passage
which would appear to approach very near to the
conception of fire and water as primary elements.
The Ribhus are represented as speaking * correct '■
words when forming the cups : " ' The waters are
most excellent/ said one ; ' fire is most excellent/
said another ; the third praised the thunderbolt (or
the cloud containing the lightning) exceedingly.,,2
The translation is not certain and the meaning too
obscure to admit of any inference as to the allusions
in the sayings. In another passage a Eishi pro-
pounds the question, "how many fires, dawns, and
suns are there ? " and assures the wise fathers in
heaven that he is not putting the question as a riddle,
but really seeking for information.3
1 III. 2. 10, 11. ; I. 70. 3. ; X. 183. 3., cf. III. 56. 3., IV. 58. 5. ;
I. 98. 2., I, 67. 9. ; II. 35. 8.
2 I. 161. 9. 3 X. 88. 18.
56 Generation.
We come now to the waters. They figure alone
as the mothers ; the streams, and in particular the
Sindhu, are the most motherly of mothers.1 They
know the birth of heaven and earth ; they are the
begetters of all that stands and moves ; they are
the mothers and wives of the existing world, growing
up together in one home.2 Their cosmogonic activity
is, however, much more frequently described in union
with the light in such passages as those already
quoted. The origin of the world is conceived on
the analogy of the common experience of ordinary
life. The advance of the sun into the watery heaven
and the shooting of the lightning from the dark
masses of the rain-clouds are the signs of the
periodic regeneration of the world ; Rudra, the storm -
god, is the divine physician, and the waters are his
vivifying medicines ; the origin of the world was,
therefore, held to have been due to a primeval sunrise
or a primeval thunderstorm. 3 The light was the
first germ, the waters were the bearers of the germ.4
The general fructifying agency of the storm, which
is so all-important in India, finds its clearest expression
in the figure of Parjanya, the god of the rain-cloud.
He is the god who fructifies the earth as a rutting
bull ; he produces fruit in plants, mares, cows, and
1 VIII. 78. 4., I. 158. 5., III. 33. 3.
2 VII. 34. 2., VI. 50. 7., X. 30. 10.
3 Cf. e.g. Val. 3. 8.
* Cf. X. 82. 1.
Parjanya and the Waters. 57
women ; and hence receives the title of father.1
The Maruts similarly receive the title because they,
as a husband, place the fructifying germ in the
earth and in women.2 "Parjanya produceth rain,
Agni the embryo ; may ye both give us strength
to beget children."3 The following hymn describes
the most characteristic actions of Parjanya.
VII. 101. 1. " Speak the three words that are
pointed with light,4 which milk this udder of sweet
milk ; as soon as the bull is born he belloweth,
producing calves and the germ in plants.
2. He who giveth increase of plants and waters,
who ruleth as god over the living world ; may he
grant threefold protection and shelter, and threefold
light for our assistance.
3. Now she is barren and now she bringeth forth,
he formeth her body as it may please him ; the
mother receiveth milk from the father ; thereby is
the father strengthened and also the son.5
4. In whom all things abide ; through the three
heavens threefold the waters flow : the three dripping
vats flow with mead on all sides plentifully.
1 V. 83. 1, 6., VII. 102. 2., VII. 101. 3.
2 VI. 49. 10., V. 58. 7., X. 63. 15., V. 53. 13.
3 VI. 52. 16.
4 Perhaps with reference to the comparison of the sacrificial prayers to
the arrow-like flames of the sacrificial fire, cf. X. 87. 4., II. 24. 8.
Mention of the tisro vacah recurs in IX. 97. 34., cf. VII. 33. 7.
5 His wife is the earth, cf. A. V. XII. 1. 12. ; the sun is probably the
lightning of IX. 82. 3.
58 Generation.
%
5. May this hymn please Parjanya, the monarch,
may he accept it favourably ; may quickening rain
be ours, and fruitful plants tended by the god.
6. He is the fructifying bull of the multitude
of maidens (waters cf. III. 56. 3.), in him is the
breath of all that moveth and standeth ; may this
sacrifice protect me for a thousand years — protect us
ever, ye gods, with blessings/'
The principle of cosmogonic generation was, how-
ever, already in the Rigveda extended beyond the
union of the light and the waters. We find mention
in one hymn of a primordial substance or unit out
of which the universe was developed. This is 'the
one thing' (ekam) which we have already met with
in connection with Aja, the Unborn,1 and which is
also used synonymously with the universe 2 in
accordance with the principle which is the key to
much of the later mysticism that cause and effect
are identical. The poet endeavours in a strain,
which preludes the philosophy of the Upanishads,
to picture to himself the first state of the world,
and the first signs of life and growth in it. The
speculations of the Yeda are, however, characterized
by a marked difference of tone as compared with
those of the Upanishads in the absence in them of
the practical end and object of the latter, deliverance
from the world.
1 I. 164. 6, 46., X. 82. 6.
2 III. 54. 8., X. 48. 7., Val. 10. 2.
The One Thing. 59
X. 129. I.1 "The non-existent was not, and the
existent was not at that time ; there was no air nor
sky beyond ; what was the covering in ? and where ?
under shelter of what ? was there water — a deep
depth ?
2. Death was not nor immortality then, there was
no discrimination 2 of night and day : that one
thing breathed without a wind of its own self; apart
from it there was nothing else at all beyond.
3. Darkness there was, hidden in darkness, in the
beginning, everything here was an indiscriminate
chaos ; it was void covered with emptiness, all that was ;
that one thing was born by the power of warmth.
4. So in the beginning arose desire, which was
the first seed of mind ; the wise found out by
thought, searching in the heart, the parentage of
the existent in the non-existent.
5. Their line was stretched across ; what was
above ? what was below ? there were generators,
there were mighty powers ; svadha below, the pre-
sentation of offerings above.
6. Who knoweth it forsooth ? who can announce
1 The latest of the many commentators on this hymn are Professor
Whitney in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xi.
p. cix, and Dr. Schermann, Philosophische Hymnen aus der Rig- und
Atharva-Veda-Samhita verglichen mit den Philosophemen der alteren
Upanishads, 1887.
2 Or praketd may perhaps have here the sense of ' light-giver, illumi-
nator,' which would also he suitahle in I. 113. 1. and I. 94. 5. "We
should then translate in verse 2. ' there was no light of the day nor of the
night,' and in verse 3. 'all this was a lightless chaos.'
30 Generation.
V-
it here (= III. 54. 5.) ? whence it was born, whence
this creation is. The gods came by the creating of
it (i.e. the one thing) ; who then knoweth whence
it is come into being ?
7. Whence this creation (lit. emission) is come
into being, whether it was ordained or no — he whose
eye is over all in the highest heaven, he indeed
knoweth it, or may be he knoweth it not."
If we accept the text as it stands, eshdtn ' their '
in verse 5 will refer to kavayah, i the wise.' ' Their
line' is a beam of their light. The word prdyati
in the other passages where it occurs has only the
meaning 'presentation of sacrifice'; if we retain this
meaning and the allusion to the ancient fathers,
technically expressed by the word svad/td,1 we obtain
a natural parallel to the contrast of the preceding
piida between retodhah and mahimanah in the free
action or enjoyment of the fathers below and the
sacrifice of the gods above. The chief difficulty
which presented itself to the mind of the poet was
to make a division between the upper world and the
lower, to bring dualism out of unity : it is for this
purpose that he introduces ' the wise, ' who draw
their line across, dividing heaven and earth. This
solution, however, failed to satisfy him, and he gives
1 The primary meaning of svadha is ' free action according to the
unfettered -will of the actor ; ' accordingly it is used of the happiness of
the fathers : dha has in the compound almost the sense of our do, as in
eno dddhanah II. 12. 10., aghdsya dhata I. 123. 5.
The Non- Existent and the Existent. 61
up the problem in despair. The principle of
generation, on the other hand, underlies the whole
as a self-evident principle of cosmogony : desire
{It&ma, ep&><?) is the first requisite of generation ; it
is the seed of thought ; the wise find the bdndhu,
1 relationship ' or f parentage ' of the existent in the
non-existent ; the fathers are represented as retodhah,
the generators. Hence the translation ' warmth ' is
preferable to ' asceticism ' for tdpas ; the warmth
explains how the process of birth became possible. l
The hymn is remarkable for the clearness of expression
of the automatic evolution of the world; the universe
is represented as emanating of itself from the one
thing, like a stream issuing from a fountain-head.
Lastly we come to the expressions dsat and sdty
the ' non-existent ' and the ' existent. ' The word
dsat is used in the Bigveda in two senses, as an
adjective with vdcas ' speech ' and as the converse
of sat as in the passage before us. In the first
case the meaning is clear ; it is equivalent to asatydt
1 cf. X. 190. 1. The question as to the relation of Jcama and tdpas in
these verses to the later tdpo ,tapyata and so 'kamayata of the Brahmanas
is a part of the general question of the relation of the Rigveda to the
Brahmanas. The cosmological importance of warmth in the view of the
ancient Aryas receives a full treatment in M. Emile Burnouf's La Science
des Religions, pp. 207 if. " Trois phenomenes ont frappe 1' intelligence des
Aryas, des le temps ou ils n'hahitaient encore que les vallees de l'Oxus :
ce sont le mouvement, la vie et la pensee. Ces trois choses, prises dans
leur etendue, embrassent tous les phenomenes naturels sans exception."
He proceeds to show how warmth was regarded as the principle explaining;
all three forms of action.
62 Generation.
the unreal or the false, the converse of that which
is really the fact.1 When used with sat it occurs
invariably in passages of a cosmogonic character;
sat is said to be born from dsat, that is, translated
into modern idiom, dsat precedes sat or dsat becomes
sat; we are told that Indra made dsat into sat in
a trice ; or dsat and sat are mentioned as in our
hymn as belonging to the first creation.2 Where
the two words are coupled together by a con-
junction, dsat always precedes sat. The dsat must
therefore have had in itself the potentiality of
existence ; it is not merely the ' non-existent, ' but
may almost be translated the 'not yet existing/ as
bhdvat is elsewhere opposed to sat, 3 jai/amdnam to
jatam, and bhdvyam to bhutdm. It is not colourless as
our word ' nothing,' it is the negation of sat. Thus
the whole meaning expressed by these dark words
is nothing more than the process of becoming, the
beginning of development or creation.
The subject of this chapter is of special interest
as illustrating the relation between the symbolical
1 V. 12. 4., VII. 104. 8, 12, 13. cf. Lata IV. 5. 14.
2 X. 72. 1, 2., VI. 24. 5., X. 5. 7. The philosophic comment of
Sayana on verse X. 129. 1. is disproved by the expression sato bdndhum
dsati nir avindan in verse 4. If we treat the hymn philosophically, we
must assume a stage between those states described in verses 1 and 4 in
which dsat was present, but there was as yet no sat. The context, how-
ever, shows that the poet merely wished to shadow forth a condition in
which absolutely nothing existed ; and the presence of dsat is denied
because it was inseparably associated with sat.
3 I. 96. 7., A. V. VII. 1. 19.
Allegory and Analogy. 63
or allegorical manner of thought, which is an
important factor in the formation of mythology,
and the analogical or metaphorical method of early
speculation. In the one case forces and agencies
are clothed with a distinct personality, they are
endowed in some measure with an active will and
character ; in the other the actions only are viewed
as partaking of the nature of human actions. The
poets of our hymns feel themselves less constrained
to analyse the processes of creation, the mode of
working of the different productive forces, than to
define and specify the nature of the agents. The
nouns — to borrow the phraseology of grammar — lose
their anthropomorphism sooner than the verbs. The
two metaphors which have now been passed in review,
the metaphor of building and that of generation, are
used almost indiscriminately to express the action
of any creative agent ; and in the following chapters
we shall meet with no further attempt to elucidate
the process of creation.
CHAPTER III.
THE SACRIFICE.
In the explanations of the origin of the world which
were described in the two preceding chapters there
was room for considerable difference of opinion as to
the extent to which they were influenced by the
sacrificial system of the Ttishis. The theory which
is the subject for consideration in this chapter may
be regarded as specially characteristic of the Eishis.
In the former cases it was natural to assume that
the motive of speculation was the desire to discover
a plausible explanation of the origin of things; in
the present case we are unable to decide whether
the motive was purely speculative or the outcome of
the exigencies of a system. The glorification of the
sacrifice, which was the main task of the Eishis, led
them to represent the sacrifice in the light of the
supreme cause of all successful action in the world,
and it may have been only in consequence of this
representation that they extended its working to the
creation and ordering of the universe.
The sacrifice, as it appears in the Eigveda, is the
means of gratifying a god by ministering to his
The Efficacy of the Sacrifice. 65
wants, and so enabling him to perform his wonted
actions; it is an instrument through which a relation
of mutual friendship between a god and his worshippers
is established. The later idea of the sacrifice as a
contract between a man and his god, which could
be used against a god to force him to perform the
will of the sacrificer, does not find expression in our
hymns. Those passages in the Rigveda, which
through the omission of the mention of the gods
might seem to ascribe to the sacrifice in the hands
of man a power independent of the gods, can in all
cases be explained either as referring to divine
sacrificers, or as assuming the co-operation of the
gods. On the other hand, human sacrificers are
represented as associating themselves with the gods
through the sacrifice, as assisting the gods in their
actions, and in an after-life or in a state of ecstasy
as participating in divine power. The worship of
deceased ancestors is well known to be one of the
very earliest forms of worship, traces of which
survive in every popular form of religion. The
Rigveda allows us in this particular to draw an
unusually clear line of distinction between the
common conceptions of death as they existed in
the minds of the people, and the peculiar colouring
given to them by the bias of the Yedic Rishis.
According to the popular view, the first ancestor
who died, the king of the land of the dead, is Yama.
One passage added on to the last hymn but one of
>' or THE
UNIVERSITY
or
ca>. iroi
66 The Sacrifice.
the ninth book, where it is entirely out of place as
if inserted with a careless contempt of its contents,
gives us a description of the happy land of the dead
in the third heaven, where Yama reigns as king in
perfect bliss. It is a land of undimmed brightness,
" where bliss and rejoicings, joy, exceeding joy are
to be found, where all wishes are fulfilled; there,"
prays the poet, "make me immortal."1 In another
hymn Yama is represented as revelling on a tree
of goodly foliage, "the father, lord of the people,
showing favour to our ancestors." The fathers found
this home of the blessed by following his footsteps
past the dreadful watch-dogs, and he prepares a
place there for the dead in Vishnu's realm of light.2
According to the Eishis, existence after death
and the superhuman power of the fathers depend
upon the due performance of the sacrifice ; immortality
is said to be conferred upon the priests by a sacrificial
god ; for the patrons of the sacrifice it is the
reward of liberality.3 Yama, on the other hand, the
ancient popular deity, is not primarily a sacrificer.4
The position of the fathers, the ancestors of the
Eishis, in the spirit-world, is that of a partnership
with the gods. Indra is "the maintainer of the
1 IX. 113. 7-n.
2 X. 135. 1., X. 14. 2., X. 18. 13., I. 154. 5.
3 VI. 1. 4., I. 31. 7. ; I. 125. 5, 6., X. 107. 2.
4 A figure in many respects analogous to Yama is that of Trita, who is
represented as an ancient primeval warrior, and whose connection with
the sacrifice is limited to the pressing of soma.
Association with the Gods through Sacrifice. 67
poets, the friend of the fathers in old time." l
" They were banqueters with the gods, the wise men
of old, who observed the sacred order; the fathers
found the hidden light, with effective utterances they
begat the dawn." 2 They are associated with different
gods as friends or assistants in carrying out their
characteristic works. In particular they assist Indra
in his battle with the demons, when he sets free the
cows of light and rain, even supplying him with
his weapon the thunderbolt.3 It is in agreement
with the gods and fathers that Prajapati gives
increase in cattle.4 In this particular they occupy
a similar position to Brihaspati, or Brahmanaspati,
the lord of the sacrificial prayer, who is also Indra' s
assistant, and figures in very many passages along
with the ancient Eishis who are called his sons.
But the alliance with Indra is not confined to the
deified sacrificers ; the priests on earth also associate
themselves with him in his combats, and supply him
with the thunderbolt to strike the demons. "I and
thou, 0 slayer of Vritra," exclaims one bold Eishi,
" will unite for victory." 5 In X. 120. 9. the poet,
Brihaddeva, even identifies himself with Indra.
More striking and significant is the relation of
1 VI. 21.8., cf. VII. 33. 4.
2 VII. 76. 4.
s I. 121. 12., II. 11. 4.
* X. 196. 4.
" X. 44. 9., V. 30. 8., VIII. 62. 11., cf. VIII. 69. 7, 16.
68 , The Sacrifice.
the ancient fathers to Agni, based perhaps on an
earlier sun-worship. The familiar mythical conception
of the origin of the human race from fire becomes
to the Rishis the origin of the ancestral sacrificers
from Agni. Agni, as also other gods of the light,
the Acvins and the Adityas,1 is the blood-relative
of the fathers, and of the sacrificing priest himself ;
he is their father, and himself a father, in the
technical sense, the friend of the fathers, the most
fatherly father.2 The connection with Agni is so
close that the fathers are even identified with the
rays of Agni's light, 3 which are not regarded as
inherent in the sun, the lightning or the fire, but
as apportioned to them by the gods.4 "It is these
beams of the sun with which our fathers were
united, 0 Indra and Agni."5 The rays are mystically
represented as seven in number, parallel to the seven
rivers of heaven and earth ; the seven ancient Rishis
are the seven friends of Agni, his seven horses, or
seven heads.6
This connection of the fathers with the light, of
1 III. 54. 16., II. 29. 3,4.
2 I. 31. 10., IV. 17. 17., et passim.
3 I. 115. 2., cf. gat. Br. I. 9. 3. 10.
* e.g. X. 12. 7., cf. III. 2. 12.
5 I. 109. 7.
6 A Yery frequent designation of the fathers as ancient sacrificers is
ndrah. The identification of the fathers with the rays of light may
perhaps explain the difficult words nricdkshas * who is the sight of men,''
and vaiqvanard ' who embraces all men,'' both primarily attributes of Agni
or the sun; compare especially III. 2. 12., 14. 4., I. 146. 4., X. 45. 3.
The Fathers Identified with Agni's Rays. 69
which they are both the embodiments and the
guardians,1 is alone sufficient to explain their action
in placing the stars in the sky : " the fathers adorned
the sky with stars as a black horse with jewels ;
they gave darkness to the night and light to the
day."2 Indra and Atri, an ancestor of sacrificers,
free the sun from the demon who causes eclipses.3
Since light is the type of wisdom and knowledge,4
the fathers are regarded as especially endowed with
divine insight, and it is particularly as the rays of
light that they receive the appellative ' the wise '
(kavdf/ah).5
The general character of the fathers will be best
illustrated by a consideration of the most important
family of priestly fathers that finds mention in the
Pigveda, the family of the Angirases. Their associa-
tion with the light is so pronounced that Professor
Roth (Pet. Lex.) defines them as a race of higher
beings between gods and men, and regards their
priestly character as a later development. Professor
Weber conjectures that they were originally the
priests of the earlier common religion of the Indians
and Persians.6 The following description will limit
1 X. 154. 5.
2 X. 68. 11., cf. I. 68. 10.
3 V. 40. 6-8.
4 cf. III. 1. 5.
5 I. 164. 5., X. 88., I. 185. 1., X. 5.
6 Indische Studien, vol. i. p. 291.
70 The Sacrifice.
itself to the conception of the Angirases held by
the Rishis themselves. They are regarded as the
typical first sacrificers, whose ritual is the pattern
which later priests must follow ; hence the frequent
expression "after the manner of the Angirases."1
By the offering of sacrifice they obtained Indra's
friendship and immortality (X. 62. 1.) ; they became
the sons of the gods ; 2 Brihaspati is himself called
an Angiras. For them Indra is said to have
recovered the cows and slain the demon Yala; or
again, it was after he had been worshipped by them
that he was able to achieve his victories.3 The poet
of VI. 18. 5. prays for such a friendship with Indra,
as that in which he was praised by the Angirases
and smote the demon. On the other hand, Indra is
mentioned as himself their leader, the most Angiras-
like, with the Angirases;4 or his name is omitted
and his characteristic actions are attributed directly
to the Angirases.5 They give gifts like Mitra and
Bhaga, and are invoked along with the gods ; they
set the sun on high and spread out the earth.6
Agni is similarly the best or oldest of the
Angirases ; 7 he is the first Angiras, the Rishi^
1 e.g. I. 31. 17., 139. 9.
2 devdputra rishayah X. 62. 1, 4.
3 I. 132. 4., VIII. 14. 8., 63. 3. ; I. 62. 5., X. 111. 4.
4 I. 100. 4., 130. 3.
5 IV. 2. 15., 3. 11., I. 71. 2, 3.
6 X. 68. 2., III. 53. 7.; X. 62. 3.
7 jyeshtham ahgirasam, I. 127. 2.
The Aflgirases. 71
the friend of the gods. The dawn, as also Soma,
receives the epithet dngirastama} The Virupah, the
group of nine and the group of ten, different classes
of Angirases, are said to be born from the fire.2 The
group of nine are expressly identified with Agni's
rays.3 The fathers are the guardians of the sun, who
give the light.4 Through the confusion of the glance
of the eye with a beam of light, they are represented
as looking upon the earth, upon the creation of the
world, and even reflexively upon Agni ; 5 they are
the spies of Mitra and Yaruna. 6 Their participation
in the creation and ordering of the world is based
on their association with the different forms of
Agni. " They measured with devising calculation
the pair of twins (heaven and earth) of common
origin and a common home, they weave again and
again a new web in the sky, in the (aerial) ocean,
the wise and brilliant ones." "The Angirases made
the sun to rise and spread out the earth."7 Their
place in the building metaphor is especially con-
nected with Agni of the sacrifice ; their preparing
a place for him, their father, is parallel to the act
of supporting the heaven. " They prepared an abode
1 IX. 107. 6.; VII. 75. 1., 79. 3.
2 ddgagve saptasye, IV. 51. 4. ; X. 62. 5, 6.
3 VI. 6. 3.
4 X. 107. 1., 154. 5., I. 115. 2.
5 I. 164. 4.,X. 177. 1, 2., I. 185. 1.
6 VII. 87. 3., cf. IX. 73. 7.
7 I. 159. 4., X. 62. 3., cf. V. 44. 6.
72 The Sacrifice.
for their father, they provided him skilfully with
a large and glorious abode ; they supported their
parents (heaven and earth) apart with a support ;
sitting down (in the sacrifice) they placed him there
(as a pillar) upright and powerful."1
Again, through the identification of the fathers
with the light, they are brought into connection
with the metaphor of generation. It was through
Agni that their ancestors were enabled to give birth
to their successors. 2 The fathers are united with
the Dawn, and desire with her to beget male
children.3 In a hymn to Soma they are mentioned
along with the morning sun as having placed the
germ in the earth ;4 and the fruitfulness of heaven
and earth, which give birth to gods and men, is
described as produced by the fathers.5
The mystical union of the fathers with the rays
of light is the fundamental idea underlying the
abstruse allusions of the two hymns which will next
occupy our attention. In the first hymn (X. 56.),
which is a funeral hymn, the poet bids the deceased
man unite himself with the beams of the heavenly
light ; he takes occasion to celebrate the power
and greatness of the fathers, to whom the spirit
1 III. 31. 12., cf. X. 92. 15. That the ahode is the place of sacrifice
is proved by verse 9.
2 I. 68. 8, 9.
3 IV. 2. 15., X. 61. 10, 11., cf. VI. 44. 23.
* IX. 83. 3., cf. I. 164. 36.
5 X. 64. 14.
Generation through the Fathers. 73
of the departed is journeying ; and ends with a
statement of the success of the journey for which
he has prayed.
1. " One light hast thou here, and yonder another,
unite thyself with the third (and highest) ; l uniting
thyself with a body mayest thou be welcome and
dear to the gods in the birth place on high.
2. May that body of thine, thou strong horse,2
bearing thy body provide us with good things, and
thee with protection; mayest thou without swerving
establish the great gods here for a support as thine
own light in the sky.
3. Thou art strong as a horse ; 2 by this thy
strength mayest thou go to the yearning maidens,3
on an easy path to the (land of) praise, and to the
sky, according to the first and true ordinances, on
an easy path to the gods with an easy flight.
4. Of their greatness the fathers also have obtained
a portion ; the gods have placed insight in them as
gods ; 4 and they have embraced in themselves all
1 The same idea finds expression in X. 16. 5., X. 14. 8. The third
light is the light in the highest region ; the reckoning naturally begins
from the place where the speaker stands, cf. IX. 86. 27., X. 1. 3., 123. 8.
Similarly Vishnu's third step upwards is the step which lands him in the
highest region.
2 Ludwig takes vajin as the man's name.
3 A metaphorical interpretation is most consonant with the context;
hence probably they are the waters of the sky or the dawns.
4 For this bold application of the name devd to the sacrifices, compare
III. 7. 7., 54. 17., IV. 2. 17., VIII. 48. 3., X. 53. 4., and see Zimmer,
Altindisches Leben, p. 205.
74 The Sacrifice.
energies;1 these (go forth and) enter again into their
bodies.2
5. With power they strode through the whole
region of the air, measuring the unmeasured ancient
stations ; in their bodies they enclosed all existing
things ; they produced 3 in many forms offspring
from themselves in continued succession.
6. Here and on high4 as sons they brought and
set up the Asura-god, who bringeth light (Agni i*n
the sacrifice below and above) ; by their third action
as fathers they have placed their own offspring, the
power of fathers, upon the earth, a thread spun
out continuously.5
7. As in a ship over a flood hath Brihadukta
with blessings mightily translated his offspring, over
the regions of the air, over all the impassable ways,
placing them in the heavenly as in the earthly regions."
The interpretation of one or two expressions in
the hymn is uncertain ; the general sense is clear.
The rays of light are here the bodies of the fathers,
which emanate from the sun, assume the forms of
all things on the earth and of the later sacrificers,
the descendants of the fathers, and again return to
1 The meaning assigned to dtvishuh in this passage in the Pet. Lex. is
'excite, call into life;' tvishe in VII. 82. 6. is translated 'to cause to
arise.'
2 Compare I. 72. 5, 9.
8 lit. they caused to stream forth from themselves in succession.
4 lit. in two ways.
6 Compare A. V. X. 2. 17.
Anticipation of Divine Blessedness. 75
their birth-place in the sky from which they had
extended themselves.
In the next hymn we have the same general
conception of the mystical action of the fathers ;
but it is the poet himself who desires to attain in
spirit the position of the ancient sacrificers. This
peculiar form of thought, frequently recurring in
the later literature, by which the aspirant identifies
himself with the object of his aspiration, is exemplified
in two ways in the Rigveda. Either the poets describe
the ecstasy caused by the performance of the sacrifice-
and the singing of hymns, or perhaps more exactly
by the intoxicating draughts of soma-juice, as a
state of divine blessedness ; or they anticipate the
glories of the heavenly world which appear to
them in visions of light. "We have drunk soma,
we are become immortal; we have reached the light,
we have found the gods." "And now that I have
attained the sight of Yaruna, his face seemeth to
me as the face of Agni ; the light that shineth in
heaven and the darkness may he, the ruler, bring
me thither to behold their form."1 The same idea
occurs in a late hymn (X. 136.), which describes
the free course of the ascete (mimi) through the air
1 VIII. 48. 3, 11., VII. 88. 2-4. ; cf. I. 125. 5., X. 31. 3., V. 30. 1,
2., VI. 9. 6., X. 2. 3., VIII. 78. 1., X. 130. 6., I. 25. 18. Ordinary
knowledge is obtained parushatvdta V. 48. 5. Such passages may contain
the original form of the later conception of inspiration that the hymns
were seen by the Rishis.
76 The Sacrifice.
as a spirit, and contains a further resemblance with
our hymn in representing the muni as walking on
the road of the Gandharvas, whereas in all other
passages (except IX. 113. 3.) the Rigveda recognizes
one Gandharva only.
III. 38. 1. "I will meditate a hymn as a carpenter,
galloping as a fast horse at a strong pole ; striving
towards1 the heavenly desirable regions, I long to
behold the wise with insight.
2. Seek then the mighty generations of the wise ;
they by steadfastness and well-doing procured an
abode in the sky; these are thy profitable guidances;2
they whom the mind desires are now come to the
firmament of heaven.
3. There they assume3 hidden forms, and anoint
heaven and earth to rule over them ; measuring
them with measuring- rods, and making them fast
and broad, they set the great worlds apart, firmly
fixed for security.4
4. They all adorn the rising (sun) ; clothed in
splendour he moveth with his own brilliance; that
is the mighty form of the Asura-bull ; he who
1 In the translation of ablii mdrmriqat I have followed the Fet. Lex.
The form occurs here only in the Rigveda ; but compare abhi mriqe I.
145. 4., II. 10. 5 ; prabhi mdrmrigat I. 140. 5.
3 For the form of expression compare X. 32. 7.
8 Grassmann in his translation neglects the Atm. p., cf. X. 5. 2., III.
ft. 8., I. 6. 4.
4 The translation of dhayase * is obscure,' Pet. Lex. Ludwig renders
' zur Nahrung,' Grassmann ' zur Labung.'
The Fathers m the Sun. IT
possesseth all forms (vigvdrupa) cometh to the waters
of ambrosia.1
5. The first, the more excellent bull2 is born, these
are his manifold invigorating draughts. Ye two
sons of heaven3 (or of Dyaus) through the hymns
of the sacrifice possess the sovereignty, ye two kings,
from of old.
6. Ye adorn in the sacrificial assembly, ye two
kings, the three worlds, all the dwelling-places ;4 I
saw there, coming thither in the spirit (mdnasd),
the Gandharvas in their course, whose hair traileth
in (or as) the wind.5
7. That companionship 6 of the cow (dawn) with
the forms of the strong bull they establish here ;
clothing themselves in one and another Asura-form
the cunning artists determine his shape.
8. That golden light, which Savitar hath here
1 The Pet. Lex. translates ' the forces of eternity ; ' a somewhat similar
passage is I. 35. 6., compare also X. 139. 6.
2 The sun, cf. V. 44. 8.
3 Of the two kings one will almost certainly be Varuna ; the other may
be Mitra, or Indra, or Soma cf. IX. 95. 4., VI. 75. 18., or more
probably Yama cf. X. 14. 7., 97. 16., 123. 6.
* ' The many places of sacrifice,' according to Lud wig's explanation ;
he quotes Y. S. 23. 49., " I ask of thee to learn it, 0 friend of the gods,
if thou art arrived thither in spirit (mdnasa) where Vishnu receives,
sacrifice at his three steps on which all the world is set."
5 cf. YIII. 7. 8., III. 14. 3.
"But here there is no light
Save what from heaven is with the breezes blown."
— Keats, Ode to a Nightingale.
6 This is the meaning for sdkmya suggested in the Pet. Lex.
78 The Sacrifice.
shed forth, none shall keep from me;1 he covereth
the spreading worlds with praise as a young woman
covereth her offspring.
9. In the form of that divine blessedness which
ye have established in the great and ancient one,
may ye two embrace us ; 2 all the Virupah, the
cunning artists, behold the works of him who standeth
protecting (the world) with his tongue (fire)."
The description of the cosmological importance of
the sacrifice would, however, be incomplete without
a reference to the prayer or hymn of sacrifice, the
regulated utterance of the sacrificial priests. The
prayer is mentioned especially as the instrument
through which the Eishis effect their works and
obtain children.3 It is coupled with the fire, soma,
and ghee as their bride ; and thus adds one more
element of complication to the interpretation of the
different cows and nurses of Agni. But it is also
mentioned once or twice alone as a power influencing
the course of nature. " Adoration (namas) hath
supported the heaven and the earth."4 The place
1 Ludwig translates, "that is the light of this Savitar, not mine." If
with Grassmann we treat the clause as elliptical, we must supply some
sense of frequent occurrence with ndkir; for such a sense compare I. 69.
7., VI. 30. 2., VI. 7. 5., IV. 30. 23., VII. 32. 5., VIII. 28. 4., X. 132.
3., I. 155. 5. The general meaning will he that of the Gayatri III.
62. 10.
2 lit. what of the ancient ye have established of the great, divine
blessedness, be ye around us.
3 prajavata vdcaso, I. 76. 4. : V. 45. 11. etc.
* VI. 51. 8.
The Heavenly Sacrifice. 79
of Vac and Vacaspati in the cosmogonic system will
be dealt with later. In II. 24. 5-7. the sacrifices,
old and new, are personified as kavdyah, and repre-
sented as discovering the devices of the Panayah
against the laws of nature, and bringing back the
hidden fire.1
So far we have been considering the power of
the earthly sacrifice in causing the great works of
nature, and in elevating the worshippers to a position
of friendship and almost of equality with the gods.
The peculiar analogical or typical logic of the
Rigveda receives, however, more striking illustration
from the heavenly sacrifice. The whole ritual of
sacrifice with all its appurtenances, its priests and
offerings, were bodily translated from the sphere of
human action to the world of the gods. The gods
become the rich patrons for whom the sacrifice is
performed, the ydjamdnah ; Agni, the mediator
between earth and heaven, becomes their priest ; he
is established by the gods in his priestly office, as
the typical sacrificer.2 " First the gods produced
the hymn of praise, then Agni, then the offering,
so Agni became their sacrifice."3 He is the pur ohita,
the appointed priest, of the gods, or perhaps, in the
classical sense, their family priest. The gods are
even said to have obtained immortality through the
1 cf. III. 4. 5.
2 VIII. 23. 18.
3 X. 88. 8.
80 The Sacrifice.
sacrifice by drinking the soma, or as the gift of
Agni or of Brihaspati, who therefore receives the
title « father of all the gods/1 In X. 53. 10. it
would seem that it was the soma made by the
Ribhus through which the gods obtained immortality.
Heaven and earth, the primeval father and mother,
are, in particular, the first sacrificers, whose priest
is Agni, their first-born, the sun or the lightning.8
The cosmological significance of the divine sacrifice
finds particular expression in three hymns of the
tenth book. Two of these (81 and 82) are addressed
to a god Yicvakarman, who combines in his person
the characters of a primeval divine sacrificer and of
a creator. We have already seen these two functions
united in Agni. We have further seen how the
sun, or an abstraction derived from the sun, under
the names of Hiranyagarbha and Aja, figures as at
once the germ and the creator of the universe ; the
sacrificial side of Agni's character, as the primeval
priest or father, and in this sense the creator of
the world, is embodied in the person of Yicvakarman,
who is thus a parallel figure to Hiranyagarbha, with
many common characteristics, and who was in the
later literature identified with him. The name
1 In many passages the word (leva may refer primarily to the deified
ancient sacrificers. The Maruts, however, are particularly represented as
sacrificers, III. 32. 2., V. 29, 3, 6., X. 122. 5. ; and probahly this is the
meaning of their attribute vedhds.
" IV. 56. 2., II. 2. 3.
Vigvakarman. 81
Yicvakarman occurs twice more only in the Rigveda,
both times beside vigvddeva. "Thou, Indra, art over
all ; thou hast made the sun to shine, thou art the all-
worker (rigrakarman), the all-god, the mighty one."1
In the other passage it is an epithet of the sun,
"by whom all existing things are brought to light,
the all-worker, possessed of universal godhead."2 A
third passage, in which the form rigvdkarma occurs,
is ambiguous. The hymn seems to be placed in
the mouth of Yacaspati sapatnahdn, * the lord of
speech, slayer of rivals.'3 The mention of Yacaspati
would seem to point a reference to verse 7 of our
first hymn ; but the hymn is rather to be compared
with the incantations of the Atharvaveda, in which
less regard is paid to the deity invoked, than to
the form of invocation.
X. 81. I.4 "He who, sacrificing all existing things,
as Rishi, as sacrificer, sat down (for sacrifice) our
father ; he desiring treasure 5 by prayer entered,
the first worshipper, among men on earth.6
2. "VYhat was his standing-place ? what was the
1 VIII. 98. 2.
2 X. 170. 4.
3 X. 166. 4. For another interpretation of this hymn see Zimmer,
Altindisches Leben, p. 175.
4 Some verses of these hymns have been translated by Professor F. Max
Miiller in his Hibbert Lectures, p. 293 f.
6 cf. X. 45. 11., 46. 2. The only similar form to prathamachdd is
kavichdd, an epithet of Indra and Agni III. 12. 3. ; the translation
remains doubtful.
6 cf. II. 34. 11.
82 The Sacrifice.
support ? how was it ? l whence Yicvakarman pro-
duced the earth, and revealed the sky by his power,
the all- seer.
3. He who hath on all sides an eye, on all sides
a mouth, on all sides an arm, and on all sides a foot,
producing heaven and earth, weldeth them together
with his arms as wings (i.e. fanning the flame,
cf. X. 72. 2.), the sole god.
4. "What indeed was the wood ? what too was
that tree, from which they fashioned the heaven
and the earth ? Seek, ye thoughtful men, by your
thought, that on which he took his stand when he
made all things fast.
5. The highest, the lowest, and the middle sacrificial
stations, that are thine, 0 Yicvakarman, and also those
here, teach to thy companions at the sacrifice, thou
blessed one ; do thou sacrifice to thyself 2 delighting
thyself.
6. 0 Yicvakarman, do thou, delighting in the
offering, thyself sacrifice to heaven and earth. May
other men about us be fools; let us have a beneficent
lord.
7. We invoke Yicvakarman, the lord of speech
1 The first pada is too short by three syllables, or the second by four ;
the employment of hatamdt ' which,' not ' what,' referring to one of a
known class, may point to a corruption of the text. Verses 3, 4, 5,
and 7 have each an extra syllable.
3 The expression may be translated with Ludwig and Grassmann
"sacrifice thine own body." Verse 6 and the comparison with X. 7. 6.,
VI. 11.2. render the interpretation given above more probable.
Vigvdkarman. 83
(vdcdspdti), who moveth at a thought, for help to-day
in our arduous work (i.e. 'in the sacrifice/ as havishi,
verse 5) ; may he hear all our invocations with
favour, who bringeth all good for our welfare, whose
workings are successful." l
X. 82. 1. "The father of the eye, wise in spirit,
produced these two worlds, submerged in ghee ; as
soon as the eastern ends were made fast, heaven
and earth extended themselves.
2. Yicvakarman, whose power is wide as his wisdom,
was the ordainer and disposer, and the highest
apparition ; their (the fathers') offerings revel in rich
juice, there where the one, they tell us, is above the
seven Rishis.
3. Who is our father, the generator, the disposer,
who knoweth the stations (in heaven and earth) and
all existing things ; who ordained the forms of the
gods, even he alone; to him all other beings go for
information (i.e. to learn their destination).
4. The ancient Rishis offered to him treasure in
abundance as singers ; who, settled in the earthly
and heavenly regions, 2 prepared these things that
have come into existence.
5. That which is before the heaven and before
1 Sadhtlkarman. The play on Yicvakarman's name is obvious.
Probably in both words the reference is primarily to the special meaning
of Jcdrman * sacrificial work.'
2 Reading nishattdh. The Pet. Lex. derives asurte silrte from the root
svar 'shine,' cf. alurta, adrishta, K.Z. xxvii. p. 63.
84 The Sacrifice.
the earth, before the Asura-gods (or the gods and
the Asuras) ; what first germ did the waters receive,
where all the gods appeared together ? x
6. The waters received that first germ, where all
the gods were collected ; it rested on the navel of
the Unborn that alone (ekam), in which all existing
things abide.
7. Ye will not find him who gave birth to these
things ; another thing hath arisen among you ; covered
with darkness and stammering, wander the wanton
singers of hymns."
In artistic composition and arrangement the two
hymns are as weak as the hymn to Hiranyagarbha.
If we eliminate the play on the word vigua and the
general expressions of creation, the nearest analogy
to the figure of Vicvakarman is Agni, whose sacrificial
character is especially alluded to in the phrase svaydm
yajasva tanvam "sacrifice to thine own self." The
derivation of the conception from the sun is seen in
the expressions ' the father of the eye/ ' the all-seer *
(the latter an expression applied elsewhere twice to
the sun and once to Soma), 'the highest apparition.'2
Verses 5 and 6 of the second hymn find their parallel
in verses 7 and 8 of the hymn to Hiranyagarbha.
Aja, the Unborn, seems here to be identified with
Yicvakarraan. There can then be little doubt as to
the motive of the two hymns. They are based on
1 cf. III. 54. 9., V. 44. 6, 7., X. 61. 19.
2 IV. 1. 6., 6. 6., for other references see Grassmann's Lexicon.
Vac. 65
the conception, already described, of the sun as the
first-born of the world and the prototype of subsequent
generation, and contain little more than an adapt-
ation of this conception (not necessarily of hymn X.
121) to a sacrificial god, an adaptation which may
be ascribed to the special bias of the Rishis.
In connection with the sacrifice the title 'lord
of speech' requires special examination. The title
is also applied twice to Soma. Yac, ' speech, ' is
celebrated alone in two whole hymns, X. 71. and
X. 125.,1 of which the former shows that the primary
application of the name was to the voice of the hymn,
the means of communication between heaven and
earth at the sacrifice. The other hymn illustrates
the constant assimilation of the varied phenomena
of nature to the sacrifice ; all that has a voice in
nature, the thunder of the storm, the reawaking of
life at dawn, with songs of rejoicing over the new
birth of the world, are embodied in this Yac in
the same way as it is said of Brihaspati, that he
embraces all things that are. It is thus another
expression for that idea of the unity of the world,
which we have seen crowning the mystical specula-
tion of all the more abstract hymns of the collection.
Again, as the natural phenomena corresponding to
Hiranyagarbha and Yicvakarman are the phenomena
1 The comparison of verses 2, 3, and 7 of this hymn with VIII. 100.
10, 11., I. 164. 34, 35, establishes the accuracy of the tradition which
connects the hymn with Vac.
86 The Sacrifice.
of light ; so also corresponding to Vac we find,
though in a very much less marked degree, the
analogies of the breath of the wind, and of the flow
of the voice, represented by the river Sarasvati,
hymns being frequently compared to streams.1 The
wind is the breath or life of the gods (citmdn), and
the embryo of the world ; with it the soul of man
unites itself after death ; 2 Vayu is called the lord
of the ritd? Sarasvati fills earth and air ; she is
continually coupled in invocation with the prayers;4
and becomes later an impersonation of language. The
last two verses of X. 125. will suffice as an illustration
of the general terms in which the universality of
the nature of Vac finds expression. "I give birth
to the father on the summit of the world, my birth-
place is in the waters in the sea ; thence I spread
forth over all existing things, with the crown of
my head I touch yonder Heaven. I too breathe
a strong breath as the wind, supporting all existing
things ; beyond the heaven, beyond the earth, I
have become so great by my power."
The hymns to Vicvakarman make no attempt to
explain in what way the process of sacrifice could
be regarded as an act of creation. We are told
little more than that he was a primeval sacrificer
1 V. 11. 5., I. 113. 18.
2 X. 168. 4., X. 16. 3.
3 VIII. 26. 21.
4 VI. 61. 11. ; X. 65. 13., VII. 35. 11., cf. I. 3. 12.
Punisha. 87
and also a creator; we have no hint how to combine
the two ideas into a harmonious unity. The next
hymn, the Purushasukta, one of the very latest
hymns of the Bigveda, is an attempt to solve this
difficulty. The legend of the formation of the universe
from the different parts of a giant is well known to
comparative mycologists ; ' here we see how the
Eishis adapted the myth, to serve their own ends.
X. 90. 1. "The Man {purusha) had a thousand
heads, a thousand eyes, and a thousand feet ; he
covered the earth, in all directions, and extended ten
finger-breadths beyond.
2. The Man was all this that hath been and will
be made, and a possessor of the immortality which
groweth. great by food (offered in sacrifice).
3. Such was his greatness; yea, the Man was still
mightier ; all that hath been made was one quarter
of him, three quarters of him were the immortals
in heaven.
4. With three quarters the Man mounted up, one
quarter came here again ; thence he strode out on
all sides over that which eateth and that which
eateth not.
5. From him the Yiraj 2 was born, and from the
1 cf. e.g. Orphic Hymn 26, page 202 in Abel's edition.
2 Viraj, whose name in X. 159. 3. appears to mean 'queen,' would
seem to be the female counterpart of Purusha, as Aditi of Daksha in X.
72. 4, 5. ; cf. Brihadar. Up. 4. 2. 3., and Dr. Muir's note in his
translation of this hymn, Original Sanskrit Texts, vol. v. p. 369.
88 The Sacrifice.
Yiraj tlie Man; as soon as lie was born, he reached
out over the earth eastwards and westwards.
6. "When the gods prepared the sacrifice with the
Man as the offering, the spring was the sacrificial
butter, the summer was the fuel, and the autumn
was the offering.
7. As a victim on the (sacrificial) grass they
anointed the Man who was born in the beginning;
him the gods sacrificed, the Sadhyas1 and the Rishis.
8. When the sacrifice was completed, they collected
the dripping fat from it; it formed the beasts of
the air, of the wild places, and of the village.
9. When the sacrifice was completed, the Rig-
hymns and the Sama-hymns were born from it, the
incantations were born, the Yajus was born from it.
10. From it were born the horses, all the cattle
that have two rows of teeth ; the kine were born
from it; from it the goats and sheep were born.
11. When they disposed the Man, into how many
parts did they form him ? 2 What are his mouth,
his arms, his thighs, and his feet called ?
12. His mouth was the Brahman ; his arms were
made the Eajanya ; his thighs were the Vaicya ;
and the Qudra was born from his feet.
1 The Sudhyas would seem to be divine ancient sacrificers. Compare
X. 109. 4.; also X. 191. 2., VII. 21. 7., and X. 130.
2 Or elliptically, following Professor Avery's suggestion, Journal of the
American Oriental Society, vol. xi. p. cxlix, ''dividing him into all the
parts into -which they formed him."
Pitnts/w. 89
13. The moon was born from his mind, the sun
from his eye ; Indra and Agni from his mouth, and
Vayu was born from bis breath.
14. From his navel came the air ; from his head
arose the sky, from his feet the earth, from his ear
the regions ; so they formed the worlds.
15. He had seven enclosing logs of fuel, and
thrice seven layers of fuel ; when the gods performed
the sacrifice, they bound the Man as victim.
16. (=1. 164. 50.) So the gods sacrificed a
sacrifice sacrificially : they were the first sacrificial
erdinances. Those mighty ones attained to heaven,
where the ancient Sadhyas abide as gods."
We have now passed in review the three most
circumstantial explanations of the origin of the
world. In the first chapter it was regarded as a
work of art ; and since the principal manufacture
known to the men of the time was the working of
wood, the world was pronounced a production of
builders and joiners. In the second chapter the
origin of the world was ascribed to the agency
of that visible process which is the cause of all
natural, as opposed to mechanical, production. In
the argument of this chapter the origin of the
world was supposed to have been effected by a
similar instrumentality to that which is represented
as the most efficacious in the hands of man, the
formal sacrifice. The three explanations are not
mutually exclusive ; any two of them or all three
90 The Sacrifice.
are frequently combined together in one verse. The
classification adopted in this essay is, therefore, to
be regarded as one of practical convenience only.
Further, it must not be supposed that what is here
described as the system of the Eishis was their
exclusive possession. There may have been laymen
whose views were more sacerdotal than those of the
priests ; as there may have been, and doubtless
were, priests to whom speculation was dearer than
ritual.1 On the other hand, a classification based
on later forms of thought would have been positively
misleading. We may very easily persuade ourselves
that in some isolated verse we have discovered the
starting-point of a later philosophy, where the com-
parison of similar passages shows that it was only
the poverty of our imagination which confined the
meaning within our own particular range of thought.
The Rigveda must be made its own commentary.
It is a not infrequent occurrence that a whole
complex of modern ideas finds its most happy and
appropriate expression in an old term, or a proper
name or attribute, or in the words of an ancient
saying. The words themselves have contributed
nothing to the formation of the ideas ; they had
lost their first meaning and were fast falling into
oblivion, when the breath of a spirit from another
sphere inspired them with a new vitality.
1 cf. X. 71. 11.
CHAPTER IT.
THE ORDER OF THE WORLD.
Attention has already been drawn to the narrow
boundary-line which often separates the expression
of the superficial guesses of unscientific thinkers
from the expression of the profoundest results of
modern philosophy and science. We meet continually
in our hymns with forms of expression, appearing
at first sight to be the vehicle of grand thought,
placed side by side with puerile and foolish conceits.
Some general rule is needed for the guidance of
the interpreter. In the case of an individual man
it may be an impossibility to draw a line of circum-
scription marking out the range of his thought ; in
the case, however, of a class of men, the difficulty
will naturally be increased of defining the capacity
of the deepest or acutest thinker among them ; but
we can draw inferences as to the construction which
they as a class will put upon a given expression,
and so reflexively as to the sense in which an
author addressing them expects his words to be
understood. The difficulties of the critic will be
found to concentrate themselves for the most part
92 The Order of the World,
on the interpretation of abstract words. Common
experience teaches us that an unscientific speaker
makes a large use of a limited number of abstract
words in different senses, neglecting for the time
being in each particular application of his terms the
senses, which in other contexts he would himself
intend by them. The terms are rich in the variety
of their meanings, the connection of which with one
another may not appear strictly logical; but the
connotation of the terms in individual expressions
is limited. The character of the hymns of the
Eigveda is in general anything but philosophic or
scientific ; consequently, in order to find the motive
for the use of particular words or phrases we are
bound to seek on every occasion the most special
meaning which the context will admit, at the same
time remembering that no such need of a strict
limitation was probably present to the mind of the
author.
The word used to denote the conception of the
order of the world is ritci.1 Everything in the
universe which is conceived as showing regularity
of action may be said to have the fit a for its
principle. In its most general application the con-
ception expressed by the word occupied to some
extent the place of natural and moral law, fate, or
1 The account which Professor F. Max Miiller has given of this world
in his Hibbert Lectures, pp. 237 fL, is based on his view of the etymology.
mta. 9a
the will of a supreme god. It is the great and
mighty ritd,1 which gods and men obey, and beside
which the Yedic gods sink into the position of
angels or heavenly spirits. The ritd was, however,
in itself too stationary, too conservative, and purely
regulative to be endowed with the individual life
necessary to a god ; it remained an abstract idea
and was not an object of direct adoration.
More usually the meaning of the word as applied
to the natural world connects itself with the alter-
nation of day and night, the regular passage of the
sun through the heavens, or the unswerving motion
of the rain in its fall from heaven and of the streams
along their courses. This last application of the word
may have determined its special sense of 'water' in
the later language. The limited meaning as applied
to the regular celestial phenomena is illustrated by
the phrase, 'the place of the ritd,' used specifically for
the sky. " The Maruts come from afar from the
seat of the ritd."2 Yishnu is the embryo of the
ritd.3 This sense is perhaps also the ground of the
association of the word ritd with the metaphorical
antithesis of light and darkness, the types of happi-
1 mahdt, brihdt, cf. brihdt svar —
" He might not : — no, though a primeval god :
The sacred seasons might not be disturbed."
Keats, Hyperion.
2 paravdtah sdclanad ritdsya IV. 21. 3.
3 I. 156. 3.
34 The Order of the World.
ness and distress, and of moral right and wrong.
The word is used interchangeably with satyd 'reality,
truth/ and hence 'light/ 'belonging to the light;'
dnrita is the most usual antithesis to satyd. l The
sun figures in connection with both terms ; " the
earth is supported by truth, the sky is supported
by the sun, the Adityas exist by the ritd." "The
flowing of the streams is ritd, the expansion of the
sun's light is truth." The sun is "the true light
set on the sure support of the sky." 2 To the
Bishi, however, the type of regularity on earth was
the sacrifice ; the word is therefore specially employed
in the sense of sacrifice. Agni is said to sacrifice
the ritd.3 The ritd has its chariot, its ship, its horses,
bulls, cows, and the like, in all which cases the
reference is primarily or exclusively to the sacrifice.
The seat of the ritd becomes the place of sacrifice.
We proceed to the discussion of the place of
the ritd in cosmogony. The discussion limits itself
naturally to those passages where ritd is employed
in its cosmic sense, putting on one side such
expressions as ' offspring ' or ' embryo of the ritd \
applied to Agni and Soma, because fire and soma-
juice were produced at the sacrifice. The principle
of the order of the world, of the regularity of cosmic
1 VII. 56. 12., IX. 113. 4., III. 6. 10. ; IV. 5. 5., VIII. 62. 12.,
VII. 49. 3. cf. V. 12. 4., Brihadar. Up. 1. 4. 14.
2 X. 85. 1., I. 105. 12., X. 170. 2.
3 I. 75. 5.
Rita as a First Principle. 95
phenomena, was conceived by the E-ishis to have
existed as a principle before the manifestation of
any phenomena. The argument would seem to be
somewhat as follows. The phenomena of the world
are shifting and changeable, but the principle
regulating the periodical recurrence of phenomena
is constant; fresh phenomena are continually re-
produced, but the principle of order remains the
same ; the principle, therefore, existed already when
the earliest phenomena appeared ; in the Yedic
idiom it is their father, it has given birth to them.
This parentage is exactly parallel to that of heaven
and earth. Heaven and earth are the first according
to or by reason of the vita ;l the gods are born of
ritd. The view that the principle must precede
the manifestation appears to be the motive of the
following short and rather incomprehensible hymn,
probably one of the latest in the collection.2
X. 190. 1. "Order (ritd) and truth were born from
kindled heat, the night was born, then the watery
flood.
2. From the watery flood the year was born,
disposing day and night, the ruler of all that closeth
the eye.
3. The Ordainer (dhdtdr) formed sun and moon in
order, and heaven and earth, the regions of the air
and the light."
1 X. 12. l.
2 Since it is not divided up in the pada recension.
«
96 The Order of the World.
It will be observed that the year, day, and night
come into existence before the sun, moon, heaven,
and earth. The hymn is unique in its enumeration
of progressive stages in the growth of the world.
In no other hymn is the origin of the world viewed
as a gradual process. Account must, however, be
taken of the necessities of the style in which the
hymns are composed, admitting of fragmentary
allusions of every kind, but not of the full treatment
at one time of any one thought. In one passage
at the beginning of the well-known physician's
hymn, we read that "the plants came into being
three ages before the gods." l If the passage has
any cosmological significance, and from the context
this appears very improbable, it is still too isolated
in the Rigveda to form the basis of an argument.
The expression ' born from the ritd ' 2 is in-
distinguishable from the equally common phrases
' born in the ritd * or ' according to the ritd,* or the
more indefinite expressions 'born of the ritd* 'embryo
of the ritd/ ritcijcl, ritejd, ritdprajdfa, ritdjdta, the
last of which is analysed in one passage (VI. 7. 1.)
into rite jdtd. The separate manifestations of the
ritd are expressed by the plural ritdni, where each
phenomenon is itself regarded as a ritd. Thus the
1 triyuglim X. 97. 1.
2 In II. 13. 1. ritv, the mother, is prohably the time of sacrifice. In
the Atharvaveda, xix. 53 and 54, it is time in general, kald, that appears
as the parent of all things.
King Varuna. 97
gods are the protectors or leaders of ritd; the dawn
directs the reins of ritd ; the dawns or the sun
produce ritd. Or again, the causes of these mani-
festations may be regarded as the causes of the
principle, and so we return to the familiar paradox
that the sons begat their parent. Heaven and
earth, morning and night, are the mothers of the
ritd.
The best illustration of the ideas connected with
the order of the world will be an examination of
the character of Varuna, the chief of the lords of
natural order. Yaruna is in the Bigveda primarily
the great king over all, whose throne is in the sky,
the god of peaceful dominion as opposed to the'
warrior Indra. 1 From his throne on high he looks
down upon all that happens in the world, and into
the heart of man. "He knoweth the path of the
birds, that fly through, the air ; he knoweth the
ships as lord of the sea ; he knoweth the way of
the spreading, high, and mighty wind ; and he
knoweth those who dwell above it. He beholdeth
with insight that which is hidden, that which is
done and yet to be done."2 As king he ordains
all that happens on the earth, and as legislator he
1 VII. 82. 5. A full description of Varuna's character, together with
a discussion of the origin and development of the conception of the god,
will he found in Professor A. Hillehrandt's Mitra and Varuna, Breslau,
1877.
2 I. 25. 7, 9, 11.
7
98 The Order of the World,
lays down the laws. The Maruts receive their
impulse from Indra, but their instructions from
Varuna.1 His activity shows itself pre-eminently in
the control of the most regular phenomena of nature,
the course of the sun, and of the rivers. Mitra and
Varuna set the sun in heaven as a shining chariot.
"King Varuna made a path for the sun for it to
follow," and a path for the streams. 2 The seven
rivers of the sky, as the seven rivers of the earth,
are under his control. In I. 24. verse 10. the poet
wonders whither the stars go in the daytime, and
his explanation is that "Varuna's laws are inviolable;
the moon wanders shining through the night." Mitra
and Varuna have ordained the succession of years,
months, and days. 3 And Varuna's power is not
limited to the natural world; as judge he administers
his own moral code, and is especially invoked for
forgiveness of sins against fellow-men. Indra is
mentioned as the soldier who punishes offenders
against Varuna' s laws.4
These laws are in Vedic language vratani ; the
nearest English translation of the word is perhaps
' courses of action ' or ' ways of life.' 5 It is used
1 X. 66. 2.
2 V. 63. 7., I. 24. 8., VII. 60. 4., 63. 5., 87. 1., II. 28. 4.
3 VII. 66. 11., I. 25. 8.
* X. 113. 5.
6 For the etymology of the word vratd see a note by Professor "Whitney
in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xi. p. cexxix.
' Course of action, behaviour,' is the meaning he assigns to it.
The Ordinances of Varum. 99
especially with verbs of motion or of following,
in one place with the addition of the words 'as it
were with the feet/1 and with the prepositions dnu
'after/ and its converse dti; in these constructions
vratd alone is equivalent to ritdsya pdnthdh, the path
of the ritd. It is used of the characteristic occupations
of gods and of men.2 A good wife is a wife who
follows the vratd of her husband. The vratani of a
superior power are said to overcome those of an
inferior ; the vratdni of the other gods yield to
Indra ; he places himself above all other vratani ;
he conquers the vratdni of the great flood. 3 All
things are said to be in the vratd of a powerful god.4
Thus the meaning of the word takes its colour from
the person to whom it is applied : a description of
the vratani of Varuna is a description of his activity.
The vratani of Varuna are his royal ordinances.
Soma is twice compared to a king whose vratdni
are good ; 5 and the ordinances of king Soma are
praised as the vratani of Mitra and Varuna. 6 The
criterion of excellence in a good lawgiver and judge
is the firmness and impartiality of his decisions.
What he has once determined must remain as a
1 V. 67. 3.
2 IX. 112. 1., X. 37. 5.
3 VI. 14. 3., III. 60. 6., VIII. 32. 28., X. 111. 4.
* Indra III. 30. 4. ; Parjanya V. 83. 5.
5 IX. 20. 5., 57. 3.
6 I. 91. 3.=IX. 88. 8.
100 The Order of the World.
rule to bind all subsequent decisions. Hence we
are continually told of Yaruna that bis vratani stand
fast, are unalterable (dhritavrata). "For on thee,
O thou that none may deceive, rest the immovable
vratani as on a mountain. " They are the fixed
ordinances according to which the sun travels through
heaven, the streams flow into the ocean, and the
actions of men are ruled.1 The other gods follow
the vratani of Mitra and Yaruna, they are in their
vratd; poets pray that they may walk in Yaruna's
vratd ; 2 and Mitra and Yaruna follow the vratd,
which they themselves have made, as a just king
follows his own precedents.3
Thus Yaruna occupies a position corresponding as
nearly as possible to that of the ritd, of which he
may almost be considered the personification. His
vratani are the vratani of the ritd ; the ritd is itself
called the ritd of Mitra and Yaruna ; it is the
principle of their activity, according to which they
rule ; they are the guides and protectors of the ritd ;
and Yaruna punishes offenders against the ritd.4" This
sketch suffices to show how Yaruna, the maintainer
and ordainer of all that is constant in the world,
1 II. 28. 8., cf. X. 65. 8.; VIII. 41. 1., I. 24. 10., X. 12. 5,
" The king's heart is in the hand of the Lord as the watercourses: he
turneth it whithersoever he will." — Prov. xxi. 1.
2 VIII. 41. 7., X. 36. 13., I. 24. 15., II. 28. 2., VII. 87. 7.
3 IV. 13. 2., V. 67. 3.
* III. 4. 7., II. 28. 4., X. 85. 1., V. 63. 7., II. 27. 8., VII. 40. 4.,
VII. 84. 4., cf. VII. 83. 9.
Relation of Varum to Rita. 101
could be considered as the creator of the world.
He differs from the deities mentioned in Chapter II
in that he is in no way a productive agent in nature,
his creative function is an inference from his presi-
dential capacity ; he differs from the ritd in that
he is an agent and not a mere regulating principle.
The following is one of the clearest hymns in whicli
Yaruna appears in this general character of the
orderer, maintainer, and therefore creator of the
world.
Y. 85. 1. " I will sing forth a mighty and loud
hymn to the king of all, acceptable to renowned
Yaruna ; who hath struck out the earth, as a slayer
of victims, a skin to spread forth before the sun.
2. He hath woven the air in the trees ; l he hath
placed speed in horses, and milk in kine ; Yaruna
hath placed understanding in hearts, fire in water,
the sun in the sky, and soma on the mountain.
3. Yaruna poureth forth the cask, mouth down-
wards, over heaven, earth, and air, wherewith the
king of all the world wetteth the land, as rain a
corn-field.
4. Yaruna wetteth the land, earth and sky, what
time he wisheth to draw milk ; the mountains clothe
themselves in cloud ; the tempestuous warriors 2 are
let loose.
1 Pet. Lex. ' clouds.'
2 Maruts, V. 63. 4, 6., IV. 54. 5.
102 The Order of the World.
5. This great design of the renowned Asura, of
Yaruna will I proclaim — that, standing in the
region of the air, he measureth out the earth with
the sun as with a measuring-rod.
6. This great design of the most wise god hath
none assailed, that the swift streaming rivers fill
not the one sea with water.
7. What wrong we have ever done, 0 Yaruna,
to comrade or friend (with a play on the names
Mitra and Aryaman), to companion or brother, to
one of our own tribe or to stranger, loose it from us.
8. If we have cheated at play as dishonest players,
be our sin real or such as we know not {i.e. imposed
by a curse), cast all from us, 0 god, as loose bonds,
and let us be thine own, 0 Yaruna." !
The word translated ' design ' {may a) in verses 5
and 6 calls for special comment. It is apparently
derived from an obsolete root ma ( = man), - to
think/ and is used in the sense of planning a work
of art, or a malicious attack on an enemy. It was,
however, by the Rishis approximated to the existing
root ma {mi)> ' measure/ 2 and is thus applied to the
1 The comparison with the Old Testament cannot fail to suggest
itself. For such a comparison there is no more instructive chapter than
Joh. xxxviii. ; there is scarcely a metaphor in that chapter which does not
find its exact parallel in the Vedic descriptions of Varuna. The tone is,
however, very different. The Hebrew poet is illustrating in detail the
incomprehensible power of Jehovah, contrasted with the frailty of man.
2 IX. 83. 3., cf. II. 17. 5., I. 159. 4., III. 38. 7. ; see the article ' La
maya et le pouvoir createur des divinites vediques ' by M. Regnaud, in the
Revue de l'histoire des religions, vol. xii. pp. 237 ff.
Maya. 103
measuring skill of Mitra and Varuna in laying the
foundations of the earth, and in directing the course
of the sun and the waters. The original meaning of
the word, denoting the artistic designing or planning
of a work with the mental calculation of an architect,
rather than the manual skill of a builder or carpenter,
will explain how it is that it is only once applied
to Tvashtar,1 and only once to the Eibhus.2 The
sun goes to his work knowing the design of the
gods.3 In V. 63. 7. the mdyd of the Asura is placed
side by side with the dhdrman of Mitra and Varuna.
This may a of the Asura, D}^aus pitar, whose worship
was practically a thing of the past at the time when
our hymns were composed,4 is mentioned elsewhere
only in the instrumental case; Mitra and Varuna
send rain according to, or by means of the design of
the Asura ; 5 the sun is anointed (with light) according
to the design of the Asura. The may a of the Asura
is in other passages simply transferred to Varuna ;
the sun is called the mayd of Mitra and Varuna;
or the name of the god is omitted and we are told
that the sun shines mayaya " according to design " 6
" These two children (sun and moon) wander one
1 X. 53. 9.
2 III. 60. 1. parallel to foV7, dhv, mcinas.
3 X. 88. 6.
4 Compare Dr. Bradke's Dyaus Asura, Halle, 1885.
5 V. 63. 3.
6 VIII. 41. 3. ; III. 61. 7., cf. V. 63. 4. ; I. 160. 3.
104 The Order of the World.
after the other according to design, they go dancing
round the place of sacrifice ; the one beholds all
existing things, the other ordaining the times of
the sacrifice is born again and again." l The English
word ■ design/ contrasted with the plural g designs/
illustrates at the same time the malevolent sense of
the plural of the Vedic word, a sense associated
with the singular in one or two passages only.
The contemplation of this august god Varuna,
who at first sight would appear worthy of exclusive
adoration, recalls us, finally, to the consideration
of the extent of the advance towards monotheism
testified by our hymns. There are only two ways
conceivable by which a religion can rise from a
polytheistic to a monotheistic stage. Either one of
the polytheistic gods can be elevated to a position
of unique supremacy over all the others ; or a new
god can be introduced who shall supplant the old
gods and reduce them to the condition of inferior
spirits, demons, or non-entities. The elevation of
an indigenous god may be caused by the influence
of an external religious system, or in the absence
of direct foreign influence may result from the gradual
development of the religion through the action of
philosophic thought or national enthusiasm working
upon the religion, or through systematization of
existing religious conceptions. That the impulse
i X. 85. 18.
Monotheism. 10>
towards monotheism was not the outcome of the
religion of the priests, as presented to us in the
Rigveda, will be shewn by an examination of the
shortcomings of the two principal gods of the Rigveda,
Indra and Yaruna.
Yaruna was compromised by his position of equality
with Mitra, and his association with the other gods
classed as Adityas. Essentially a god of peace, he-
could not be invoked in the struggles for victory
over hostile tribes, that blessing which lay nearest
to the hearts of the kings who were the chief patrons
of the sacrifice; as a stern god of justice he offered
little attraction to the common people ; his throne
was set in heaven, and thus he had a limited, almost
local, existence which offended the metaphysical sense
of the philosophers. Yery soon after the period of
the composition of our hymns he was reduced from
his exalted position to that of the god of the
midnight sky, or of the waters.
The favourite god of the Rigveda is Indra. H&
is endowed with the functions and attributes of most
of the other gods of the pantheon, including those
of Yaruna.1 He is set free from the limitations of
space and time. The whole universe cannot contain
1 I. 101. 3. The following list contains passages in which actions
characteristic of Varuna are ascribed to Indra: VIII. 40. 8., II. 24. 12.,.
VII. 47. 3., X. 111. 3, 8., VIII. 37. 3., VII. 98. 6., V. 40. 8., X. 138.
6., cf. VII. 66. 11., I. 25. 8. Compare also M. Bergaigne's interpre-
tation of IV. 42., La Religion vedique, vol. iii. p. 143.
106 The Order of the World.
him ; if there were a hundred heavens, and a hundred
earths, and a thousand suns, they would not equal
him ; * he embraces all nations as a felloe the spokes
of a wheel ; he holds the two worlds in his fist ;
the earth and all creatures are as a grain of dust
in his sight.2 His dominion is not limited to past
and present, it extends over all time. He is above
all that has been, and that is to be born ; in him
are all heroic deeds that have been done and will
be done.3 The conception of Indra was, however,
too much hampered by association with popular
legends, and his character too pronounced as that of
a warrior, to be acceptable to the Brahmans ; the
unusual distinctness of his personality was incom-
patible with absolute supremacy. He remained a
great god, the first of the Devas, but never became
the highest deity.
The verses of our hymns which refer to an unique
supreme being are not to be explained as products
of the natural development of Yedic religion as
represented to us by the Bishis. They are stray
lights from an entirely different order of thought,
which is represented later in the Upanishads.
Tradition points unmistakeably to the inference that
1 VIII. 70. 5. Atha ima atistutaya ity acahshate ''pi vci sampratyaya
eva syad mahabhagyad devatayah. Nirakta 13. 1. Similar passages are
I. 100. 15., 173. 6., VI. 30. 1.
2 III. 30. 5., I. 63. 1., X. 119. 6.
3 VIII. 89. 6., VIII. 63. 6.
Brahmam and Kshatriyas. 107
the speculations which these latter contain were
particularly characteristic of the royal class. l If
we consider further that in the Vedic age the priests
had not yet attained to the high position of sole
authoritative teachers among the people which they
afterwards arrogated to themselves, it will not perhaps
be an improbable conjecture that the lay philosophy
to which these verses bear witness was in its origin
the production of members of princely families
independent of the narrow system of the Bishis.
Their introduction into the Rigveda shows that the
compilers of that collection were not conscious of
any incongruity, and may be taken as a sign that the
ideas which they contain were the property of the
few. The Eishis, for their part, were already inclined
to regard the sacrifice as of more importance than
the character of the gods to whom it was offered.
The same indifference which is 'seen in the indefinite-
1 " "We may hope in course of time, in view of the wealth of material
extant in the Rigveda, Atharvaveda, and the Brahmanas, to be able to
trace step by step how the sparks of philosophic light struck in the
Rigveda glimmered brighter and brighter, till at last in the Upanishads
they burst into that clear flame, which even now has power to enlighten
and warm us. A number of tokens indicate that the real cherisher of
these thoughts was originally the caste of the Kshatriyas rather than the
caste of the priests, which was sated with ceremonial observances : over
and over again in the Upanishads we come across the situation that
the Brahman asks the Kshatriya for information, which the latter after
various reflections on the impropriety of the proceeding imparts to him
(cf. Brih. 2. 1., Kaush. 4. 1., Brih. 6. 2., Chand. 5. 3., 5. 11., Kaush.
1. !.)•" — Deussen, Das System des Vedanta, p. 18.
108 The Order of the World.
ness of their conceptions of individual gods explains
to some extent the fact that they had not energy
enough to develope their theology into a monotheism.
Their religion remained essentially polytheistic ; l but
side by side with the religion, independent of it,
though not in hostility with it, there was a germ
of mystic philosophy cherished by a few speculative
thinkers, who recognized one supreme cause and
bowed down in devotion before it.
1 Compare on this subject an article by Professor Whitney in the Revue
de l'histoire des religions, vol. vi. p. 129, of which a summary is given in
the Journal of the American Oriental Society, vol. xi. p. Ixxx.
APPENDIX.
APPENDIX
THE COSMOGRAPHY OF THE RIGVEDA.
This appendix will contain a short sketch of the
conceptions of the form of the world, the stage on
which the cosmological actions are performed, con-
sisting of earth, heaven, and the intermediate spaces.
The descriptions of the several parts of the world,
in particular of the sky, are so various that it would
be folly to attempt to reduce them to uniformity ;
the object of this sketch is only to supply the reader
with a rough indication of the nature of the Yedic
ideas on cosmography, which are referred to in the
quotations of the essay, with special emphasis on
those points where a misconception would be likely
to arise.
The earth presented itself to the minds of the
poets as above all the broad place (prithivi, urvi,
mahtf vdrah prithivycih, mahi prithivi vdrimabhih), the
extended (uttdna), the boundless (apdra). It is the
substratum of the universe (bhilmi, kshdm, gma) ;
or the place here, simply H this " {iddm) as opposed
112 Appendix.
to what is yonder. "We have mention of the four
points of the compass (e.g. X. 19. 8.) ; and the earth
thus receives in one passage the epithet " four-
cornered" or "four-pointed" (bhumvm cdtiirbhrishtim
X. 58. 3.). More frequently, however, the point
where the speaker stands is represented as one of
the regions of the earth, raising the number to five
(pdhca pradigah IX. 86. 29.) ; they are enumerated
in X. 42. 11. Similarly the inhabitants of the
world are described as the five tribes l (pdftca
krishtdyah). The earth is depicted in one passage
(I. 35. 8.) as containing eight mountains, three
continents, and seven streams ; the enumeration
would seem to be originally mythical, and the
corresponding objects sought to suit the previously
conceived numbers. The sky has also its seven
streams flowing down from the clouds which are its
mountains.
The conception of the form of the earth was
naturally modified by the coupling of heaven and
earth into a single dual conception (rodasi, dyavd-
prith&T, kshom). Together they are the two great
ones (mahlf mdkl, urvT, vara). In one passage they
figure as the two halves (II. 27. 15. ubhav drdhau).
From the semi- spherical appearance of the sky they
receive the name 'the two bowls turned towards each
other* (samiclne dhishdiie, and apparently camvh III.
1 v. s. v. kris/tti, Pet. Lex.
The Cosmography of the Rigveda. 113
55. 20.), or they are compared to the wheels at the
two ends of an axle (X. 89. 4.). They are equal
in size, and both are copies of Indra's greatness
(pratimana).
Heaven is represented as the realm of shining
light (div, rocandy rocandm divdh), as the woven
web of light (vyoman cf. uraii pathi vyute III. 54. 9.).
It is the height (sanu, prishthd, vishtdp) or the roof
of the world supported on high (see Chapter I.). At
times we find mention of a firmament above the sky
(divo naka) in which the stars are fixed.
More peculiar is the conception of the intermediate
space of air, between heaven and earth. The air is
not personified to the same extent as heaven and
earth, and may therefore be considered a quasi-
scientific conception. It is called simply the inter-
mediate space (antdriksha) or the rdjas. The latter
word occurs three times in the Rigveda in the plural
of the dust of the soil; the original sense of the
word may have been associated with the fine motes
(mdrici) glittering in the beams of the sun.1 The rdjas
obstructs the rays of the sun (Y. 59. 3.), and can
thus be regarded as the cause of darkness, whence
the epithet 'black' ; when illuminated it is the medium
through which the rays are conveyed to the earth
(X. 53. 6.). As the dust of the earth receives the
rain, so the dust of the air is permeated with
1 A somewhat similar combination of meanings occurs in the word
purisha, cf. pdntha arendvah I. 35. 11., and see K. Z. xxvi. p. 62.
8
114 Appendix.
moisture, and hence rajas can bear the epithet ' watery •
(aptyam I. 124. 5., madhumat I. 90. 7.). The limits of
the region of the air are said to be indiscoverable.
These three, heaven, earth, and air, are the favourite
group of three in the Rigveda, underlying all manner
of applications of the number. Some whole hymns
have no other motive than this continual play on
the number (I. 34., III. 56.). According to a
common idiom of the Rigveda the three may be
denoted by any one of the three names; they are
even all mentioned together as the three earths, the
three heavens, and the three airs;1 more complication
still is occasionally caused by the addition in the
singular of one member of the trio, when the three
have already been mentioned. The twofold division,
again, into heaven and earth, is combined with the
threefold division, and thus we have mention of six
worlds, or six rdjdmsi. These were originally mere
freaks of language, but the expressions led to a sub-
sequent real subdivision. In the Rigveda we read
of an upper, middle and lower heaven (V. 60. 6.) ;
one passage (I. 108. 9, 10.) speaks of an upper, middle
and lower earth ; the word earth seems in this passage
to be used in a loose sense (cf. VII. 104. 11.). In the
Atharvaveda, however, the division is clearly denned
(A.V. VI. 21. 1.). The triple subdivision is par-
ticularly marked in the case of the rajas. In the
1 For a similar manipulation of the numbers compare VII. 33. 7.
The Cosmography of the Rigveda. 115
highest of the three rdjdmsi {tritiye) are the rain-
waters. The two lower regions are within the range
of our perception ; the third belongs to Vishnu, whither
he stepped with the third of his ascending strides
(VII. 99. 1., cf. I. 155. 5.) ; it is the invisible, mys-
terious rajas (ddbhutam X. 105. 7.).1 More fre-
quently, however, the rajas is divided on the twofold
principle, the one half belonging to the earth (par-
thivam rajah), the other to the sky (divo rajah).
Prof. H. Zimmer in his book, ' Altindisches Leben,'
p. 357, has alleged the existence of a rajas beneath
the earth to account for the course of the sun in
the night : we will close this sketch with a discussion
of his hypothesis. It cannot be doubted that in
the majority of cases, where two or three rdjdmsi
are mentioned, they are conceived as all above the
earth. A perfectly clear instance to prove that
parthivam rajah is situated above the earth is I.
81. 5. a paprau parthivam rdjo badbadhe rocand divl,
"he filled the earthly rajas and pressed against the
sky." The epithet mddhumat applied to parthivam
rajah (I. 90. 7.) can scarcely refer to anything under
the earth. The presumption is, therefore, that in
all cases the same words refer to a rajas above the
earth. Zimmer refers to three passages, VI. 9. 1.,
1 The conception of the highest region as hidden above the light, or
hidden in impenetrable light, offers an explanation of some passages which
have caused difficulty to interpreters, e.g. X. 114. 2. pdreshu guhyeshu
vrateshu cf. I. 155. 3. and IX. 75. 2.
116 Appendix,
VII. 80. 1., and V. 81. 4. The first passage reads
dhag ca krishndm dhar drjunam ca vi vartete rdjasl
vedyabhih. Zimmer translates " es durchrollen die
lichte und schwarze Tageshalfte offenkundig die beiden
Luftkreise." We must compare I. 185. 1. vi vartete
dhanl cakriyeva, "day and night revolve like two
wheels/' i.e. circling round from east to west, the one
rising as the other goes down. We are in no way-
obliged to consider that the progress of either is
continued further below the earth. The next passage
excludes such an interpretation : vivartdyantlm rdjasl
sdmante avishkrinvatim bhuvanani vigva (VII. 80. 1.),
the dawn "unrolling the two rdjasl, which border
on one another, revealing all things." Here Zimmer
remarks, " beide Gebiete stossen aneinander ; " the
limits, however, coincide just as well if we regard
both rdjasl as narrowing down together towards east
and west (cf. V. 47. 3.), or the adjacent borders
may be the horizontal plane which separates them.
The question is decided by the consideration that
only one moment is described, namely, that of
daybreak; the dawn is represented as unrolling,
unfolding both together, and at the same time as
giving light to the world. On the other passage
V. 81. 4., utd ratrlm ubhaydtah pdrlyase, Zimmer
observes, "die Nacht umwandelt Surya von beiden
Seiten. " The verse is, however, addressed not to
Surya but to Savitar, who, though in some sense a
god of the sun, has a special character as god of
The Cosmography of the Rigveda. 117
the evening. I translate then, "and thou encompassest
the night on both sides " (cf. IX. 86. 6).
But if we dismiss the hypothesis of a rajas under
the earth, how did the poets of the Rigveda explain
the course of the sun ? In one passage an explanation
appears to be offered; the words are aydm cakrdm
ishanat suryasya ny etacam rlramat sasrimdndm \ a
hrishnd im juhurdno jigharti tvaco bud/me rcijaso asyd
yonau (IY. 17. 14.). Indra stops the chariot of the
sun, and, turning it round, flings it into the concealing
darkness, apparently the darkness belonging to the
night- sky, the way that it came. A similar idea
occurs in the Aitareya Brahmana (3. 4. 44.), where
the sun is said to turn round so as to shine downwards
in the daytime and upwards in the night. In the
same way we are told that it is another rajas which
accompanies the sun to the east, different from the
light with which he rises (X. 37. 3) ; the light which
his horses draw is now bright, now dark (I. 115. 5.),
or the path along which his horses travel becomes
dark (I. 164. 47.). Such an explanation was, however,
inapplicable to the stars, and one poet asks in wonder,
"These stars, which are set on high, and appear at
night, whither do they go in the daytime ?" (I. 24. 10.) ;
and even in the case of the sun a doubt is expressed
in the question, " how many suns are there and how
many dawns?" (X. 88. 18.)
INDEX OF PASSAGES,
An asterisk is affixed to those passages which are wholly
or partially translated, or which form the subject of special
comment.
RIG VEDA.
PAGE
46
I. 3. 4
3.12 86
6.4. 76
13.10 41
22. 17* .... 44
23.16 5
23. 17 33
24.7 17
24. 10.*. . . 98, 117
24.. 14. . . .
24. 15. . . .
25. 7, 9, 11* .
38
100
97
25. 18 75
31. 7.
31. 10.
31. 17.
35. 6.
35. 8.
42. 1.
46. 11.
48. 3.
66
68
70
77
112
31
49
33
PAGE
56. 5 * ..... 20
62, 5. i .... 70
62. 7. i * * . . 12
63. 1 106
67.5* ..... 54
67,9. . ; * . . 55
68. 8. 9. * ... 72
68. 10. i . i . . 69
69,7. ..... 78
70. 3 55
71.2,3. i i . . 70
72.5,9. .... 74
75,5. . , , . . 94
81.5. ..... 115
83.5. ..... 34
84.15. . .... 24
89. 10. ... 46, 115
90. 7.
91. 3.
94.-5.
95. 2.
96. 7.
115
99
59
23
62
120
Index.
PAGE
PAGB
I. 98. 2. . . .
. . 55
I. 154. 5 66
100. 4. . . .
. . 70
155. 3. . .
39, 115
100. 15. . .
. . 106
156. 3. . .
. 93
101. 3. . . .
. . 105
157. 5. .
. 39
105. 12.* . .
. . 94
158. 5. .
. 56
106. 7. . . .
. . 10
159. 2. .
. 32
108. 9, 10.
. . 114
159. 3 .* ,
21, 32
109. 7 * . .
. . 68
159. 4 .* .
71, 102
110. 2, 3. . .
. . 26
160. 3. .
34,
47, 103
110.6.* . .
. . 26
161. 9 .*
. . 55
113. 1. . . .
163. 2 *
i . 36
113.4.*. . .
. . 19
163. 3. .
. . 13
113. 18. . ,
. . 86
164. 4. .
. . 71
115. 1 * , .
. . 53
164. 5. .
. . 69
115.2. . . .
. . 68
164. 6.*
. . 54
115. 5. . . ..
115, 117
164. 20.
. . 17
117. 22.. , ,
. . 23
164. 33. .
, ; 41
121.2. . . .
. , 25
164. 34, 35.
. . 85
121. 12. . .
. . 67
164. 36.
. . 72
123. 5. . . ,
, 11, 60
164. 46*
. . 53
123.9. . . .
. . 30
164. 47.
. . 117
124. 5. . . .
33, 114
164. 50*
. . 89
125. 5, , , .
. . 75
173. 3. .
. . 31
125. 5, 6. . .
... 66
173. 6. .
. .106
127. 2. . , ,
. . 70
185. 1*.
31
,71, 116
130. 3. . .. .
. 52, 70
185.2. .
. . 31
131. 1. . . .
. . 46
188. 5.*.
. . 19
132. 4. . . .
. . 70
188. 9. .
. 23, 40
136.2. . . .
. . 12
190. 2. .
. . 19
139. 9. . . .
. . 70
140. 5. . . .
... 76
II. 1. . .
. . 13
145. 4. . . .
. . 76
2.2. .
. 80
146. 4. . . .
... 68
3. 6. .
. 49
147. 2. . . .
. . 5
4.7. . .
. 47
Index.
121
PAGE
II. 10. 5 ...... 76
11.4. . , , . . 67
12. 5. , , , . . 5
12. 8. ...... 51
12. 10. ..... 60
13. 1. , , . . . 96
15. 2. ..... 20
15. 3* 18
17. 5 102
23. 17 * ...... 23
24. 5-7 * . . ... 79
24. 8 57
24. 12 105
26. 1 • . 5
27.8- . . . . .100
27. 15 112
28. 3- ...... 100
28, 4. . . . 98, 100
28. 8* 100
29.3,4.. ..... 68
33. 1. 30
34. 11 .81
35. 5.. . . . . . 47
35. 8 55
38.8.. 44
40 39
40.3. . . . . . 35
III. 1. 5 69
1. 8. . . ... 76
■ 1. 9. r , • . . 35
1.17. « , < . . 22
2.. 10, 11. -,.. 55
2.12. r r ... . 68
PAGE
III. 4. 5 79
4. 7 100
4. 9 .40
5. 10 22
7. 7. .... . 73
12. 3 81
14. 3. ..... 77
14. 4. ..... 68
20. 4 12
22. 3 33
30. 4 99
30. 5.. 106
30. 11 21
31. 12.* .... 72
32. 2 .80
33. 3 .56
33. 6. 10
38* ...... 76
38. 2. ..... 21
38. 3 * 19
38. 4 46
38. 6. ..... 37
38. 7. ..... 102
48, 4. 24
53. 7. ..... 70
54. 5. ..... 60
54. 8. . t . . . 58
54.9. . . , 84,113
54. 14. . . * . . 12
54. 16. , * . . . 68
54. 17. . . * .• . 73
55.15. ,,,.-. 49
55.19. , / , . . 23
55. 20. . .- , . . 113
122
Index.
PAGE
III. 56. 3 55, 58.
60. 6. 103
60,3 99
61. 7.* 103
62. 10 78
IV. 1. 6 84
1,2Q 46
2. 15 72
2. 17 73
3. 10 34, 70
5. 13 49
5. 14 62
6.2.* 22
6.6 84
13.2 100
13.5. 22
17.14.* .... 117
17. 17 68
18.13. , .... 24
21. 13 93
24. 1 45
32. 22. ..... 31
33. 1 26
34,9. , , . . . 25
34.19 24
37. 4., , , t . . 25
38. 5. , , , . . 51
38. 10 33
39.5. , , , . . 51
42. 1. , , , . . 49
42.3. , , , . . 23
50. 1 * , , , . . 21
51.2. < ^ .... 19
PAGE
IV. 51.4. . . , . . 71
51. 6 * ..... 26
54 10
54. 5. ...... 101
55. 5, 7 10
56. 2 80
56.3.* 20
58 34
58. 1, 11. ... . 35
58. 4 38
58.5 55
V. 1. 4. 32
3, 1 53
3, 1, 2. .... 13
11.5. 86
11.6* 31
12 5
12. 1 46
12.4 62
13,6 .53
15. 2. ...... 20
29. 3, 6. . . . . 80
29. 4 * 20
30.1. 75
30.8 67
40. 6-8 69
40. 8 105
42. 10. .... . 5
42. 12. ..... 25
42. 13 23, 41
43. 6. ..... 40
44. 6 71
44. 6,. 7.. .... 84
Index.
123
Y. 44. 8. .
44.11. .
45.1. .
45. 2. .
45. 10.*
45. 11. .
47.3. .
48. 5.
50.10. .
53. 13. .
58. 4. .
58.7.. .
59. 2 * .
59.3. .
59. 8. .
60.6. ,
62. 7, 8.
63. 3, 4.
63. 4, 6.
63. 7. .
67. 3 .*
80. 5.
81. 4*
81. 4, 5.
83. 1.
83. 5.
83. 6.
85*
85. 2.
85. 5*
YI. 3. 8.
6. 3.,
7. 1.
PAGE
'. 77
. 46
. 19
. 22
. 33
. 78
. 35
. 75
. . 10
. 57
. 25
. 57
- . 22
. 113
. 114
. . 22
. 103
. 101
98, 103
. 99
.. . 33
. 116
; . 13
.. . 57
.." . 99
. . 27
. . 101
. 20
. 18
. . 24
. . 71
. . 96
PAGE
YI. 9. ..... . 46
9. 1.* . . . . . 11&
9.6. ..... 75
11.2. ..... 82
14.3. ..... 99
17. 7.* . . , . . 20
18. 5. ..... 70
21.8* ..-,.. 67
24. 5. . , . . . 5
29. 3. ..... 36
30. 1. . . , . . 106-
30. 2. . , , . . 58
36. 1. . , , . . 46
44.23. ..... 72
47.3,4.*- .... 18
47.5. ..... 22
49. 10 .57
50. 7. ..... 56
51.8* . , , . . 78
52. 16* .... 57
55. 1. ..... 31
55. 4. ..... 39
58.3,4. .... 39
60. 4. ..... 98
61. 11, .- .... 86
63. 5. . .... 98
64.4. . . i . . 33
75. 5. ..... 31
75.18. ..... 77
87. 1. . < t . . 98
YII. 1.2...... 22
2. 5. , . . . . 35
21. 7 88.
124
Index*
VII. 33. 4.
.
33. 7. .
«
33.12. .
«,
34. 2. .
.
34. 20, 21,
22
36.9. .
.
40.4. .
t
41,2. .
.,
47.3. .
..
47. 4. .
..
48. .2* .
*
51. 1. ,
K
60. 4* .
,
75. 1. .
*
76.. 4* .
K
80. 1* ,
«-
82. 5 .* .
•.
83.9. .
.,
84. 4. .
•
87.3. ..
.
87.7.. .
*
88.. 2-4.*
.,
94.1. ,
.^
98. 6. .
..
99. 1. .
*.
99.2.. .
#j
99.3* ..
.
101* , ,
t
101.3. .
._
102.2., .
<
104. 8, 12,
13.
104. 11. K
.
104. 14-16.
•.
- ...
PAGE
. . .
57
37
56
40
39
100
11
105
33
25
. 46
33
71
. 67
116
97
100
100
71
. 100
. 75
30
105
115
18
21
. 57
48
.. 57
62
114
5
VIII. 1. 11
6. 18.
6. 20.
7. 8..
14.8.
18.. 13.
18. 20.
23.. 18.
25. 5.
26..21.
32. 28.
37. 3.
41. 1.,
41.. 3.
41.7..
41. 10..*
45. 6*
48. 3 *
48. ia.
Val. 3. 8.
10. 2.
VIII. 63. 6
66. 5.
69. 7. .
69.7,16
70. 5 *
78.3..
78.4..
89. 6.
92.11*
92. 14.
PAGE
38
42
20
77
70
5
10
79
45
86
99
105
100
103
100
54
20
75
50
56
52
106
38
35
67
106
30
56
106
67
45
Index.
125
PAGE
PAGE
VIII. 98. 2. . . . .
. 81
X. 4. 4. . . .
. . 49
100. 5. . . . .
. 35
5 * . . . .
. . 48
100. 10, 11. . . .
. 85
5. 2. . ♦ .
. . 76
5. 7. . . .
. 45, 62
IX. 5.5.*. . . .
. 19
7. 6. . . .
. . 82
5. 9.. ... .
. 52
10. 2. . .. .
. . 46
9. 4.* ... .
. 33
10. 4. . . .
. . 37
20. 5. . . . .
. 99
10. 5. . . .
. . 41
57. 3
. 99
11. U ♦ . ,
. . 34
67. 10-12. . . .
. 39
11.2. . . .
. . 37
73. 7. . . . .
. 71
12. 1* . . .
. . 95
74. 5
. 46
12. 5. . . .
. . 100
75. 2. . . . .
. 115
14.7. . . .
. . 77
78. 3. . . „ ,
. 38
14. 8. . , .
... 73
81. 4. . . . .
. 40
16. 3. . . .
. . 86
82. 3. . . . .
. 57
16. 5. . . ,
. . 73
83. 3. . . .
72, 102
17. 1, 2. . .
. . 40
83. 4 * . , . .
. 38
18. 13. . . .
. . 66
85. 9-12*
. 37
19. 18. . . .
. . 112
86. 29. , . .
. 112
24.4,5* . .
. . 43
86. 36* . •
. . 38
27. 21. . . .
. . 33
87. 2. « . .
. . 45
28. 8* . . .
. . 17
88. 8. , , ..
. . 99
29. 6 * . . .
. . 18
95. 4.. . . .
. . 77
30. 5. . . .
. . 38
97, 22. . . .
. . 21
31. 3. . . .
. . 75
97. 34. , . .
. . 57
31. 7* . . .
. . 17
107. 6. , . ,
. . 71
31. 7-10 * . ,
. . 47
112. U , \ *
. . 99
32. 7. . .
. . 76
113. 3* , . .
. 38, 76
35. 7. . .
. . 99
113.7-11*. .
. . 66
36. 13. . .
.. . 100
37. 3. . .
. . . 117
X. 1. 3. . . .
. . 73
42. 11. . . ,
, . . 112
2. 3. . . .
. . 75
45. 11. . .
. . . 81
2.7. .. . .
. . 23
46.2. . . .
. . . 81
126
Index,
PAGE
X. 46. 9 23
48. 7 58
49. 10.* .... 24
50. 3 46
53. 4 73
53. 6 113
53. 9 80
54. 3 32
56 * 72
58. 3 112
61 41
61. 10, 11. ... 72
61. 19 84
62. 3.*. .... 71
63. 3 46
63. 15 57
64. 5 45
64. 10 40
64. 14 72
65. 13 54, 86
66. 2 * 98
67. 2 46
71 85
71. 4 42
71. 11 90
72.* 42
72. 1, 2. ... 62, 82
74. 2 46
81.*. ..... 81
82.* 83
81. 4* 17
82. 1. .... . 56
82. 6 * ...... 54
85. 1 * 100
PAGE
X. 85. 6 103
85. 9* 39
85. 18* ..... 104
85. 21, 22. ... 39
85. 26. 27. ... 39
85. 40, 41* ... 39
85. 43 52
87. 4 57
88. 1. 22
88. 6 103
88. 8 .* 79
88. 18*. . . 55, 117
89. 1 21
89. 4. . . .. . .113
90.* 87
92. 15. , .. , . . 72
97. 1 .* 96
97. 16 77
98. 1 13
105. 7 115
107. 2 66
109. 4. ..... 88
110. 9.* .... . 23
111. 3,8 105
111.4 99
113.5 98
114. 2. ..... 115
114. 5* 53
119. 6. 106
120. 9 67
121 * 50
122. 5. ..... 80
123.* ....... 35
123. 6. . .... 77
Index,
127
PAGE
X. 123. 8 73
125. 7, 8 * ... . 86
129* 59
130 88
130. 6 75
135. 1 17, 66
136 75
138. 6. . . *. °. . 105
139. 4-6. ". '. . 37, 77
149. i;* '. . *. . . 21
151. 1. . '. '. . . 12
153. 2. '. '. . . . 45
159. 3. 87
166 81
168. 1. ..... 36
168. 4. ... . 50, 86
169. 4. .... 52, 67
170. 2 * . . . . 20, 94
170. 4 * 81
177. 2* ..... 36
178. 3 33
184. 1 39, 52
190* ...... 95
190. 1. ..... 61
191. 2. ..... 88
ATHARVAVEDA.
II. 1. ..... 36
III. 12. 1 19
IY. 1 36
VI. 21. 1 114
YI. 49. 1 48
PAGE
VII. 1. 19 62
X. 2. 17 74
X. 7. 38 17
XII. 1. 12 57
XIX. 53, 54. ... 96
VAJASANEYISAMHITA.
23. 49. ..... 77
CATAPATHA BRAHMANA.
I. 9. 3. 10. .... 68
IY. 1. 1. 25. .... 36
AITAREYA BRAHMANA.
3. 3. 30 26
3. 4. 44. . . . . . 117
4. 4. 27 44
BRIHADARANYAKA
UPANISHAD.
1. 4. 14.
2. 1. 7.
4. 2. 2.
4. 2. 3.
94
30
7
87
CHANDOGYA UPANISHAD.
3. 1. 1 20
5. 13. 1. ..... 40
MAHABHARATA.
(Jantip. 10862. ... 30
128
INDEX OF SANSKRIT WORDS.
PAGE
ajd 54
dditi 45 f
ddbhuta 115
at/dm 35
avamgd ..... 20
dsat 61 f
dsura 46
ashambhand .... 20
uttandpad .... 42
ritd . . . . 92 ff, 100
ekam . . . . 53 f, 58
guhya 115
Jcavdyah .... 69
goshano naput . . . 31
tdpas 61
ddhha 44
devd . . . . 10, 73, 30
drapsd 36
dhdrman 20
dhritdvrata . . . .100
pavitra 47
purisha 113
prahetd 59
prajapati 52
PAGE
prdyati 60
prdcah 18
marydda , . . . 49
muyd 102 ff
mi 19
rdjas 113ff
vdna 17
vdnaspdti . . . . 22
vavri 49
vdyukega . . .37, 77
vidharman .... 20
vibhvata8htd ... 24
vimuco napdt ... 31
virdj 87
vigvdJcarman . . 81, 83
vigvdrupa .... 40
vedhds 80
vydthih 47
vratd . ... . . 98ff
gamydm 47
sat 61f
sdhasas putrdh . 31, 45
stegd . . . . . 47
svadhd . ... . 60
129
GENERAL INDEX.
Aqvins, 38 ff, 43 f, 68.
Heaven, 3 If, 42 ff, 90, 95,
Aditi, 15, 42, 44 ff.
113.
Agni, 5, 211, 32ff, 47 f, 68,
' Henotheism,' llff.
79.
Hiranyagarbha, 50 ff, 84 f.
Air, 113.
Indra, 18, 20, 22, 24,45,67,
Aja, 54.
70, 98, 105f.
Angiras, 69 ff.
Kshatriyas, 107.
Apsaras, 37ff.
Mahabharata, 8.
Aramati, 10, 30.
Martanda, 42, 44.
Asura, 46, 103.
Maruts, 57, 80.
Atharvaveda, 7, 14 f, 81.
Mitra, see Yaruna.
Atri, 69.
Monotheism, 15, 104ff.
Bhaga, llf.
Netar, 10.
Brahma, 53.
Non-existent, 61 ff.
Brihaspati, 21, 23, 43, 67.
Parjanya, 57ff.
Qavasi, 45.
Plants, 96.
Daksha, 42, 44 ff.
Prajapati, 52.
Dawn, 39ff, 72.
Purusha, 87.
Dhatar, 10, 95.
Piishan, 38 ff.
Dyaus, 103.
Ribhus, 24ff, 55, 80.
Earth, 3 If, 42 ff, 80, 95, 111.
Rishis, 4ff, 21, 64ff, 85, 87,
Father, 12, 29ff.
90, 106 ff.
Fathers, 66 ff.
Rudra, 30, 56.
Gandharva, 34ff, 76.
Sadhyas, 88.
Gnas, 40.
Saranyu, 40 f.
9
130
Index.
SarasvatI, 30, 86.
Savitar, 9, 13, 26, 40, 116.
Soma, 22, 30, 38 ff, 99.
Surya, 39 ff.
Tratar, 10.
Trita, 66.
Tvashtar, 9f, 23 f, 38, 40 f.
Upanishads, 58, 107.
Vac, 85 f.
Varuna, 18,71, 97 ff.
Vayu, 86.
Yena, 34 ff.
Viqvakarman, 80 ff.
Vidhatar, 10.
Viraj, 87.
Yirupah, 71.
Yishnu, 18, 21, 38, 44, 66,
115.
Vivasvat, 39, 41.
Waters, 56.
Worlds, 112.
Yama, 37, 39 f, 65 f.
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